She took the empty brown hand-satchel out of Skeeter’s nerveless hands and opened it.
“Pour dat money in dis bag, Hitch!” she commanded. Then she uttered a wail, collapsed into a heap upon the seat, and her mouth dropped open like an imbecile’s.
Hitch Diamond had mysteriously disappeared!
Dizzy, nauseated, sweating at every pore, Pap Curtain sat up in the middle of his pallet in the rear room of the Hen-Scratch saloon, his tongue as dry and thick as if his mouth were filled with cotton-seed hulls. He moved his head and an iron wedge rolled off the apex of his crown and bumped against the inside of his cranium like a rock rattles in a tin can.
“He’p! Come here, eve’body!” he bawled, balancing his head and steadying it with both hands to keep the wedge from bumping against a new place.
“Little Bit—Lawdymussy! My head hurts inside and outside!” he howled to the diminutive assistant barkeeper of the Hen-Scratch saloon.
Little Bit stood beside him, giggling, holding out a half-pint flask.
“Skeeter Butts say gib you dis as soon as you woked up!” he said.
Pap took the bottle, removed the cork; then his hand drooped limply, his head dropped to one side, and the precious fluid was pouring out upon the pallet.