“Didn’t you say, just as that fool hobo learned that guns are loaded: ‘Gents, I’m askin’ you to step up and name your poison’? There’s your money on the bar.”
The crowd chuckled and moved a step closer to the bar. Anderson, without waiting for a reply, called to the bartender:
“I’ll take straight whisky for mine.”
After one look into Anderson’s eyes, Baldy grinned ingratiatingly.
Toothpick and Windy decided that discretion was the better part of valor. Dragging Tad Hicks with them, they slipped out of the bar.
“Huh!” Windy complained, as the cool air refreshed him. “I was lit up considerable, but now I’m plumb sober.”
“Me, too. Baldy scared me sober,” Toothpick agreed. “I’m goin’ to buy that hobo drinks aplenty, ’cause he sure stopped Baldy from hurtin’ my feelings.”
“Sure did. But I’m tellin’ yuh that Bill Anderson is some nervy hombre, runnin’ in on a sidewinder rattler like that toothless old ape. Folks says he’s a grafter, but I’ll vote for a coyote, if he tells me to, just because he made that Baldy draw in his horns,” Windy confided.
Toothpick did not reply. He was puzzling out an answer to a riddle. Why had Baldy backed down, when Anderson confronted him? He left Windy and Tad Hicks at the Lone Star and then went to look for Jim Anson.
“That little runt sure saved my reputation, an’ he can have half of my bed, even if he is a dirty little tramp,” he told himself.