The door was pushed open again, and two more Garsykes Men came in, bringing the smell of a soft, wet breeze across the stale sawdust of the tavern floor.
They in turn glanced curiously at the stranger, but he forestalled them.
“I’m going to be first with a question this time. Is it true that such as me is safe in Garsykes?”
“That all depends,” said Murgatroyd, recovering his good humour. “Have you done aught again the law?”
“A tidy bit in my time.”
“Such as?” growled one of the late comers.
“Well, the last thing I did, as I said, was to come nearer Kingdom Come than ever I’d been in my life. A running post-boy was due, not a hundred miles from where we’re sitting, and I wanted what he’d got.”
“That was no more than reasonable, as you might say.”
“He’d got more than I bargained for—a pistol and a spirit of his own. I closed with him just in time—and here’s the mark of the bullet where it grazed my neck.”
They saw the red weal he turned to them, then glanced at the silver he had thrown on the table.