"Yes, I reckoned it would be a mixed lot, 'stead o' which, they are all of a gang. All the honest ruffians have been cleared out."
As Camote did not hasten in, Oliver rose, went up to the counter, threw down a dollar, took up a bottle at hazard, spite of the nearer bar 'tender's scowls, and returned. He clapped it on the table, knocked off the ring of glass round the mouth and its cork a-flying, with a dexterous cut of the back of his knife, and poured out brimmers of wine for himself and his friend in the pannikin which, like a gold prospector, he always carried at his waist, and in the silver mounted cup cover of Mr. Gladsden's brandy pistol.
"Here's to well-out-of-this!" he murmured in English.
"I concur," added Gladsden heartily, and they drank.
"The music is over. The dance is going to begin," said Oliver, putting his tin cup up in place.
Indeed, the guitar, so noisy, was silenced. The player, a tall, haggard, lengthened rascal, who seemed to have been once hanged and pulled out by the feet, suspended the instrument carefully up on the walls and advanced in a swaggering way towards the latest comers, his hat outrageously cocked on one side, as much to cover a patch whence a portion of the scalp had been removed as to look rakish, resting one fist upon his bony, prominent hip, and the other hand on the steel hilt of a very fine old rapier of enormous length. On gazing most closely at Oliver, who happened to be the nearer to him, when he stopped in an insolent attitude, he remarked the additional pistol and knife in his belt acquired by right of conquest from the spy whom he had shot, and, after a moment's hesitation, his colour coming again more deeply, he cried, ex abrupto:
"Flames of purgatory! Gentlemen, I never knew of greater impudence than for you to present yourselves, after having murdered my brother-in-arms La Gallina."
"Caballero, what do you mean by that?" returned the American, as much surprised as all the auditors by this denunciation.
"Do you think I do not recognise the Chicken heart's pistol of two shots, by the handle nicked with cuts for the men he has slain? Was it not mine first, and did we not exchange firearms when we became sworn comrades in life to death?"
"Caballero," said the hunter again, with killing politeness, "I believe I did shoot some skunk that came prowling round me at suppertime. But, the fact is, I hate to be riled when I am eating, or drinking, and I'll put a bullet out of the same barrel into anyone who repeats the annoyance. You hear me?"