The Englishman sat aghast. Little had he thought he was impersonating a card-sharper and a wholesale murderer. The whisky came and he drank it, feeling that he needed a bracer.
"Now," said Faro Charlie, "I want to hear all about what you've been doing, first and last. Tending copper-mines, I heered, out to Michigan."
This, the Englishman felt, was going too far. It was bad enough to have to impersonate such a fellow as "Slippery Dick," but to endow him with a fictitious history that was at all comparable with Faro Charlie's account of his earlier years required too great an effort of imagination. And the fact that a quiet little man, who was sitting near by, edged up his chair and seemed deeply interested in the conversation, did not tend to put him more at his ease. No wonder, he thought, the Consul did not talk much about his brother. He therefore hastened to change the subject.
"Have you seen much of the Indians lately?" he ventured; it seemed such a safe topic.
"Thinking of that little squaw you was so chummy with down to Injun Reservation?" queried his friend, punching him jovially in the ribs. "You knew, didn't you, that they'd had her up for horse-stealing to Fort Smith? Reckon as they'd a hung her if she hadn't been a woman. She was a limb! Guess you had your hands full when you tackled her."
Scarsdale decided his choice of a subject had not been fortunate, and begged Faro Charlie to have some more whisky.
"Sure," replied that individual. "Drink with you all night."
"I'm afraid you can't do that," replied Scarsdale, hastening to rid himself of his unwelcome friend. "I have some important business to attend to this evening."
"I wish you weren't in such a rush. Come back and we'll paint the town, eh?"
Scarsdale thought it extremely unlikely, and shaking hands fled to the street with a sigh of relief; for he had had a very bad quarter of an hour. What cursed luck that he should have run across this American horror! He must avoid him at all costs to-morrow morning.