Twin River was in full blast when Dave rode in, looking for Tex. He dropped off the pony and went into the Why-Not, but his man was not there; after a few unavoidable drinks—Dave could not have avoided one if it had invited from the middle of the Staked Plain—he looked in at Ike's and the I-Call. He sampled the liquor in both places but evidently Comin' Thirty was not in that part of the town and he jogged on up to the Sweet-Echo. He had not been in here since warned off by Slick, but fear of consequences had nothing to do with absenting himself; fear did not enter into his composition. Dave's fundamental fault lay in his hatred of being beaten. It had lead him to cheat at play; to outwit by foul means; to take the sure course to any desired end, deliberately regardless of what any one might think. The danger of such actions did not deter him in the least; he was always ready, usually overwhelmingly ready, to back them up in any manner his opponents demanded of him. The defeat, sure to be met when he opposed a superior intelligence, he confidently relied upon overcoming by sheer force of personality, mistaking violence for strength, deceit for ingenuity. The bad judgment of his failures ever wore the mantle of bad luck; and the thought and time he wasted in schemes for revenge might have been used more profitably in making success of his failure.
Since his employment by Schatz his mind had been fully occupied by the furtherance, as he considered it, of his employer's plan. Buck Peters, the Englishman, even Slick, at times pricked his memory, but he had resolutely put them aside until a more convenient season. Now, with whiskey spurring his Satanic temperament, he considered it obligatory to go into the Sweet-Echo. He wanted to find Comin' and no fancy bar-keep' nor roaring Scotchman should keep him from going wherever he wanted to go. He stepped from his stirrup onto the porch and went into the bar-room as if he owned it.
The expected trouble did not develop. Slick gave him a short nod and set up glass and bottle with praise-worthy promptitude. If Dave was without fear, so was Slick, who would have taken him on in any way whatever; preferably, as became his Irish ancestry, with his hands, but failing that, with anything from a pop-gun to a cannon. Dave, with his usual habit of ignoring the other man, imagined Slick to be overawed; this leavened his savagery with good nature. What was Slick Milligan, anyhow? Just a bar-keep'—Dave turned his back to the bar and surveyed the inmates of the room. Comin' was not there. Where in thunder was he?
Maybe bucking the tiger at Little Nell's. Dave had two or three drinks with men he knew and rode back to cross the ford. He was again out in his reckoning. He watched the cards flick from the box. Nell, herself, was dealing and Dave's fingers itched to get down, but he refrained. With the vague hints dropped by Schatz and his consequent hope of speedily winning Rose, he knew he must drop gambling—until he had won to the fulfilment of his desires, at least.
As he watched he suddenly realized he was hungry and strolled into the eating house, run by Nell as a paying adjunct to her other businesses. The whiskey, as it often does in healthy stomachs, was calling loudly for food and Dave answered the call with unstinted generosity. Being genuinely wishful to see Tex he did not linger but, as soon as finished, started to make the round again.
He got no farther than the Why-Not. His entry was met by a roar of laughter and shouts of encouragement: "Bully f' you, gran'pa!"—"Did he ever come back?"—"That's th' caper, Dirty!"—"Let him alone, he ain't chokin'."
Seated on a box on the top of a table (Dirty would be buried in a box; they would never have the heart to separate his attenuated figure from the object so long associated with it in life), old Pop Snow bent up and down, shrinking, shrinking, until his bony leanness threatened to vanish before their gaze; a wheezing gasp started him swelling again and his "he! he! he!" whistled above the uproar like a hiss in a machine shop.
He was astonishingly drunk—for Dirty. His pervious clay had developed innumerable channels for alcohol in the years of training he had given it; and he was seldom so joyously hilarious as this. For one reason it was seldom that any one would pay for it, and Dirty's means only went far enough to keep him everlastingly thirsty. The explanation appeared to Dave in the shape of a group of miners, whose voices, in their appreciation, were the loudest.
"He-he-he! He-he-he-he!" Pop Snow's shrill pipe continued, while the others demanded more. "Sawbones had n't been gone a week afore he was wanted. He-he-he! eh, dear! eh, dear! Lucky Jones come along—an' stopped. Ther' wearn't nothin' to do but stop. He comes to me an' he says: 'Wheer 's ther' a doctor?' 'Well,' I says, 'jedgin' from what I hears, if you jest foller th' river north fur about fifteen mile to Drigg's Worry,' I says, 'you 'll find a saw-bones as used to be yer—but when he left he swears as how he ain't never comin' back to th' P'int,' I says. He-he-he! Send-I-may-live if he don't, though. Yep, an' Jones purty nigh goes into th' wet, too. 'Th' P'int?' roars th' Doc, 'No, siree, by G—d, no, sir! Twenty-eight mile th' last time to tend a stinkin' ole sow, on account o' a misbegotten son o' Beelzebub an th' North Pole they call Snow down there. This time I 'spose 't'ud be a skunk.' 'It's my wife,' says Jones, 'an' if yuh don't come right sudden I 'm a-goin' to blow off th' top o' yore devilish ole head,' says Jones; 'an' if she dies,' he sez, 'I blows her off, anyhow.' He-he-he! Saw-bones, he riz up an' come a-kitin'. I ain't much on Welshmen; they biles over too easy. But Saw-bones done a good job an' got away wi' his life. We hears all about it nex' day when Jones comes to me an' tells me it is two at once, boy an' a girl. Fust we knowed he 'd brung his wife. Not as she stays long. Winter 's one too many fur her an' she cashes in. Then Lucky Jones, he tries to cross th' river below th' P'int, 'stid o' th' ford, an' th' ice ain't strong enough, an' Jones, he was some drunk, I reckon. We calls th' river after him an' th' forks after th' kids. Lord, they was bad uns, both on 'em. Black Jack, he hez hisself hung for suthin' or other, an' Little Jill, she turns out just a plain—"
Every one jumped, it was so unexpected. The lead sung so close to Dirty's nose that the backward jerk almost took him off the table and he recovered his seat with a sideways wriggle and squirm that did credit to the elasticity of his aged muscles. Having managed to retain his seat, he continued to retain it. None of the others showed the least desire to move, though every last man of them yearned for absence—sudden, noiseless absence—of a kind so instantaneous as to preclude the possibility of notice: anything less were foolhardy in the face of those blazing eyes and that loosely held gun, its business end oscillating like the head of a snake and far more deadly.