“It was like this, Colonel Cook,” explained the bartender at Joe’s place, as he leaned over the counter with no great assurance and faced the Company manager. “This young gent kem in hyar all right. Decent like he gives me a two-dollar bill to pay fur a meal fur ole Bannin’. The kid ain’t no sooner gone ’an the ole man up an’ says he ain’t goin’ to eat an’ reckons ’at he’ll fill his hide with liquor. I knowed that was not the young man’s program, an’ I turned the bum down. I give him three er four drinks an’ tole him to git. He raised sech a row ’at I fin’ly guve him the whole two dollars and put ’im out. Bein’ purty drunk, he fell.”
“Where is he?” asked Mr. Cook, without comment.
“Marshal Wooley drug him home.”
Mr. Cook thought a moment, looking coldly at the bartender.
“Mike,” he said at last, “I hope you didn’t kill him.”
“Colonel,” answered the man, apparently far from being at ease, “I never laid a hand on the ole man more’n to push him outten the place.”
“Who was in here at the time?” said Mr. Cook, slowly, puffing a cloud of smoke lazily from his cigar.
“In here?” repeated the man, wiping the perspiration from his face. “I don’t rickollec’.”
“I wouldn’t, if I was you, Mike,” said Mr. Cook. “Now, you send out and find Marshal Wooley. Tell him I want him. You don’t need to look at this young man that way. He didn’t see anything. If the old man’s dead, it ain’t much loss, I reckon,” added Mr. Cook, flipping his cigar ashes upon the floor thoughtfully—“not much loss either to him nor to Bluff. But, Mike,” he added in his low, decided voice, “if he is dead, I’d get a job in some other part o’ the country.”
Mike’s face was almost white.