“Oh, well,” said Britton, “I said what I had to say. It don’t look well for any man to hold three kings all the time.”
“Av it’s a question o’ looks,” said Stumpy, very coolly, but with evident wrath, “Oi don’t loike th’ looks o’ that nose you do be carryin’ round wid youse.”
Britton looked around, but seeing that no one else at the table was likely to side with him in case of trouble, he controlled himself with an effort.
“ ‘Tain’t as good-lookin’ as I’d like to have it,” he said, with a forced laugh, “but it’s the only one—”
“An’ Oi do be thinkin’,” interrupted Stumpy, “it ud look a dom sight betther av it was longer.”
“Perhaps it would,” said Britton, still reluctant to accept the quarrel, “but—”
“But nothin’,” shouted Stumpy, reaching over and grasping the feature he had mentioned. “Maybe pullin’ it a little moight do it good.” And he gave it a mighty tweak.
Two things only were possible after that, in Brownsville, and unfortunately for Mr. Britton he chose the wrong one. A stand-up fight with nature’s weapons would have established him as a person worthy of consideration, even though he had been well licked, but he was not in the habit of fighting in that fashion, and he reached for his gun.
It was an unlucky movement. Long Mike sat next to him, and as they all rose to their feet in the excitement, the big man seized him by the wrist and the neck, and shaking him as a dog shakes a rat, he exclaimed:
“Ye’ll pull no gun in Brownsville, ye double-jointed spalpeen, ye. An’ ye’ll understhand that any gintlemon in this town that wants to play kings, can play as many as he loikes, an’ as often as he loikes. An’ the loikes o’ yez can get back to La Crosse whin ye loike.”