"Sure thing!" responded Angevine Thorne, lovingly twining his arm around his Spanish-American comrade. "Grab a root there, Pecos, and we'll take 'im home in style!"
"Wait till I git my package!" cried Pecos, suddenly breaking his hold, and he turned around just in time to see Crit skipping out the back door.
"Well, run then, you dastard!" he apostrophized, waving one hand as he tenderly gathered up his mail-order dry goods. "I can't stop to take after ye now. This here package is f'r my little Señorita, Marcelina, and I'm goin' to present it like a gentleman and ast her for a kiss. Hey, Angy," he called, as he re-engaged himself with José, "how do you say 'kiss' in Spanish? Aw, shut up, I don't believe ye! Stan' up here, Joe—well, it don't sound good, that's all—I'm goin' to ast her in U. S., and take a chance!"
The procession lurched drunkenly up the road and like most such was not received with the cordiality which had been anticipated. The Señora Garcia was already furious at Old Crit and when Pecos Dalhart, after delivering her recreant husband, undertook to present the dainty aprons and the blue handkerchiefs, marked M, which he had ordered specially for her daughter, she burst into a torrent of Spanish and hurled them at his head. "Muy malo," "borracho," and "vaya se," were a few of the evil words which followed them and by the gestures alone Pecos knew that he had been called a bad man and a drunkard and told in two words to go. He went, and with him Angy, ever ready to initiate new orgies and help drown his sorrows in the flowing cup. The noise of their bacchanalia rose higher and higher; pistol-shots rang out as Pecos shot off the necks of bottles which personified for the moment his hated rival; and to Crit, lingering outside the back door, it seemed as if their howling and ranting would never cease. It was no new experience for him to break in on one of Angy's jags, but things were coming too high and fast with Pecos Dalhart present, and he decided to wait for his revenge until they were both thoroughly paralyzed.
"But what is this 'cumrad' talk and them yells for the revolution?" he soliloquized, as Angy and Pecos returned to their religion. "Is it a G. A. R. reunion or has Joe worked in a Mexican revolution on us? Yes, holler, you crazy fools; it'll be Old Crit's turn, when you come to pay the bills."
The first gray light of dawn was striking through the door when Crittenden tip-toed cautiously into the store and gazed about at the wreckage and the sprawling hulks of the revellers. Pecos lay on his face with his huge silver mounted spurs tangled in the potato sack that had thrown him; and Babe, his round moon-face and bald crown still red from his unrestrained potations, was draped along the bar like a shop kitten. Old Crit shook him roughly and, receiving no response, turned his attention to Pecos Dalhart. His first care was to snap the cartridges out of his six-shooter and jamb the action with a generous handful of dirt; then he felt his pockets over carefully, looking for his roll, for Pecos had undoubtedly consumed a great deal of liquor and ought not to be deprived of the cowboy's privilege of waking up broke. But as luck would have it he was lying upon his treasure and could not pay his reckoning. The only article of interest which the search produced was a grimy section of a newspaper, stored away in his vest pocket, and Crit seized upon it eagerly. It was a not uncommon failing of Texas bad men, as he knew them, to carry newspaper accounts of their past misdeeds upon their persons and he unfolded the sheet with the full expectation of finding a sheriff's offer of reward.
"It's a crime to be Poor!!!" was the heading, "And the penalty is hard labor for life!" it added, briefly. There is something in that, too; but philosophy did not appeal to Crittenden at the moment—he was looking for Pecos Dalhart's name and the record of his crime. "The grinding tyranny of the capitalistic classes—" he read, and then his eye ran down the page until he encountered the words: "Yours for the Revolution!" and "Subscribe for the Voice of Reason!" Then a great light came over him and he gnashed his teeth in a fury.
"Well, the dam', yaller, two-bit-a-year sheet!" he raved, snatching a fresh copy of the Voice of Reason from the sacred United States mail and hastily scanning its headlines, "and if these crazy fools hain't gone and took it serious!" He tore it in two and jumped on it. "Two-bits a year!" he raged, "and for four-bits I could've got the Fireside Companion!" He rummaged around in the box and gathered up every copy, determined to hurl them into the fireplace, but on the way the yellow wrapper with the United States stamp arrested his eye, and he paused. After all, they were United States mail—penalty for destroying $1,000—and would have to go back into the box.
"Well," he grumbled, dumping them sullenly back, "mebby it was that new bar'l of whiskey—I s'pose they've got to holler about something when they're drunk, the dam' eejits!" He strode up and down the floor, scowling at the unconscious forms of the roisterers who had beaten him the night before—then he turned back and laid violent hands upon Angy.
"Git off'n there, you low-down, lazy hound!" he yelled, dragging him roughly to the floor. "You will start a revolution and try to kill your boss, will you? You're fired!" he shouted when, after a liberal drenching, he had brought Babe back to the world.