“Something for easier riding. An annual pass for you and one over the stage line between Calabasas and Sleepy Cat––with Mr. Jeffries’s compliments.”
Like a flash, Morgan tore the card pass in two and threw it angrily to the floor. “Tell ‘Mr.’ Jeffries,” he exclaimed violently, “to–––”
The man that chanced at that moment to be lying in the nearest chair slid quietly but imperiously out from under the razor and started with the barbers for the rear door, wiping the lather from one unshaven side of his face with a neck towel as he took his hasty way. At the back of the shop a fat man, sitting in a chair on the high, shoe-shining platform, while a negro boy polished him, rose at Morgan’s imprecation and tried to step over the bootblack’s head to the floor below. The boy, trying to get out of the way, jumped back, and the fat man fell, or pretended to fall, over him––for it might be seen that the man, despite his size, had lighted like a cat on his feet and was instantly half-way up to the front of the shop, exclaiming profanely but collectedly at the lad’s awkwardness, before de Spain had had time to reply to the insult.
The noise and confusion of the incident were 283 considerable. Morgan was too old a fighter to look behind him at a critical moment. No man could say he had meant to draw when he stamped the card underfoot, but de Spain read it in his eye and knew that Lefever’s sudden diversion at the rear had made him hesitate; the crisis passed like a flash. “Sorry you feel that way, Duke,” returned de Spain, undisturbed. “It is a courtesy we were glad to extend. And I want to speak to you about Nan, too.”
Morgan’s face was livid. “What about her?”
“She has given me permission to ask your consent to our marriage,” said de Spain, “sometime in the reasonable future.”
It was difficult for Duke to speak at all, he was so infuriated. “You can get my consent in just one way,” he managed to say, “that’s by getting me.”
“Then I’m afraid I’ll never get it, for I’ll never ‘get’ you, Duke.”
A torrent of oaths fell from Morgan’s cracked lips. He tried to tell de Spain in his fury that he knew all about his underhanded work, he called him more than one hard name, made no secret of his deadly enmity, and challenged him to end their differences then and there.
De Spain did not move. His left hand again lay on the cigar case. “Duke,” he said, when his 284 antagonist had exhausted his vituperation, “I wouldn’t fight you, anyway. You’re crazy angry at me for no reason on earth. If you’ll give me just one good reason for feeling the way you do toward me, and the way you’ve always acted toward me since I came up to this country, I’ll fight you.”