“I’ve been called a deadbeat, and I want it taken back,” he said. “It’s slander. I’m a celebrated mineralogist and assayer. Tell you how the deep leads run; analyze you anything. For example, we’ll proceed to put this hotel-keeper in the crucible, and see what we get. It’s thirty parts hoggish self-sufficiency, and ten parts ignorance. Forty more rank dishonesty, and ten of insatiable avarice. Ten more of go-back-when-you-get-up-and-face-him. Can’t even bluff a drunken man. I’ve no use for him.”
There was a burst of applause, but Weston fancied that the hotel-keeper’s attitude was comprehensible in view of the fact that the drunken man had a big ax in his hand. Crossing the room, he seized Grenfell’s shoulder.
“Sit down,” he said sternly. “Have you sold that man my horse?”
“He has, sure,” said one of the others. “Set us up the drinks afterward. We like him. He’s a white man.”
“How much?” Weston asked.
“Twenty dollars.”
Then the man with the ax, who appeared to feel that he was being left out of it, swung the heavy blade.
“We want our horse!” he said. “Trot the blame thing out!”
One of the others thereupon raised a raucous voice and commenced a ditty of the deep sea which was quite unquotable. Weston silenced him with some difficulty and turned to the rest.
“Boys,” he said, “has the man yonder spent twenty dollars on drinks to-day?”