This invitation to shake hands seemed an empty formality. De Spain never shook hands with anybody; at least if he did so, he extended, through habit long inured, his left hand, with an excuse for the soreness of his right. Pedro did not even bat his remaining eye at the invitation. The situation, as Lefever facetiously remarked, remained about where it was before he spoke, and nothing daunted, he asked de Spain what he would drink. De Spain sidestepped again by asking for a cigar. Lefever, professing he would not drink alone, called for cigarettes. While Pedro produced them, from nowhere apparently, as a conjurer picks cards out of the air, the sound of galloping horses came through the open door. A moment later three men walked, single file, into the room. De Spain stood at the left end of the bar, and Lefever introduced him to Gale Morgan, to David Sassoon, and to Sassoon’s crony, Deaf Sandusky, as the new stage-line manager. The later arrivals lined up before the bar, Sandusky next to Lefever and de Spain, so he could hear what was said. Pedro from his den produced two queer-looking bottles and a supply of glasses.
“De Spain,” Gale Morgan began bluntly, “one 45 of our men was put off a stage of yours last week by Frank Elpaso.” He spoke without any preliminary compliments, and his heavy voice was bellicose.
De Spain, regarding him undisturbed, answered after a little pause: “Elpaso told me he put a man off his stage last week for fighting.”
“No,” contradicted Morgan loudly, “not for fighting. Elpaso was drunk.”
“What’s the name of the man Elpaso put off, John?” asked de Spain, looking at Lefever.
Morgan hooked his thumb toward the man standing at his side. “Here’s the man right here, Dave Sassoon.”
Sassoon never looked a man in the face when the man looked at him, except by implication; it was almost impossible, without surprising him, to catch his eyes with your eyes. He seemed now to regard de Spain keenly, as the latter, still attending to Morgan’s statement, replied: “Elpaso tells a pretty straight story.”
“Elpaso couldn’t tell a straight story if he tried,” interjected Sassoon.
“I have the statement of three other passengers; they confirm Elpaso. According to them, Sassoon––” de Spain looked straight at the accused, “was drunk and abusive, and kept trying to put some of the other passengers off. Finally 46 he put his feet in the lap of Pumperwasser, our tank and windmill man, and Pumperwasser hit him.”
Morgan, stepping back from the bar, waved his hand with an air of finality toward his inoffensive companion: “Here is Sassoon, right here––he can tell the whole story.”