“’Pears to me she don’t write as often as she might,” remarked one of the players. “Dessay she’s a’most forgot us all—forgot as there ever was such a dog-darned place as Three Star.”
Taffy lurched threateningly toward the speaker.
“What’s that?” he demanded, with the quick resentment of a tipsy man thirsting for a fight. “Who’s that as spoke? Scraggy-head, warn’t it? I thought so! And you calkilate Esmeralda’s forgot us all, do you, Ed-er-ward? Ain’t that what he said, boys, or did my ears misdeceive me? Here, come out of it! Stand up and repeat them words like a man, and I’ll knock the head off yer!”
The man growled and looked at Varley appealingly.
“Why don’t somebody take the old man home?” he said, aggrievedly. “I ain’t said nothing’ agin her. It’s only natural as a fine lady should forget such a crew as us and such an all-fired hole as this.”
This repetition of the offense was too much for Taffy, and he lurched on to the speaker and gripped him by the arm.
The always imminent row would have commenced at once, but Varley rose and laid his hand on the giant’s huge shoulder.
“Drop it, Taffy!” he said in his listless way. “You’re interfering with the game—with the game, do you hear?” as if he were charging Taffy with something little short of sacrilege. “Come out of it, and go and get a drink.”
“Jes’ let me lay him fust, Varley,” pleaded Taffy, with almost touching meekness. “There ain’t no one going to say a word agin our Esmeralda while I’m able to stand up for her!”
“You wooden-headed idiot, you can’t stand now!” said Varley. “Here!” And with a twist of his wrist he swung Taffy off his man—who had sat quite still, as if the whole responsibility and further conduct of the affair were in Varley’s hands—and led Taffy to the bar.