"Wot friends?" asked Hackley again, hotly.
Ryan observed the mounting color on the other's cheek and brow, and his eye, which was like a small, glossy shoe-button, gleamed.
"Why, that 'un that killed that dog o' yours, and put you to sleep before the crowd, and that 'un that sent Mamie Orrick to Gawd knows where. But shucks! Drop it, Jim. I wouldn't have allooded to it, on'y I thought you'd see the fun of the thing."
It takes a philosopher to perceive humor in taunts at his own personal courage, and Mr. Hackley, with three drinks of the Ottoman's choicest beneath his tattered waistcoat, was not that kind of man at all.
He leaned forward against the bar with a belligerence suggesting that he wished to push it over, pinning his pleasant-spoken host to the wall, and pounded the top of it till the glasses tingled.
"Fill her up with the same!" he ordered loudly, looking suddenly, and for the first time, very much like the rough-looking customer who had tackled Peter Maginnis in defense of his dog. "An' I'll have you know, Mister Ryan—I'll have you know, my fine, big, bouncin' buck, that Jim Hackley ain't afeared of anythink that walks."
Ryan filled her up again, though this time more conservatively. He was a keen man and an excellent judge of what was enough.
"Shuh! Don't I know that, Jim! Why, after that big bloke licked the stuffin' out of you the other night, the boys said: 'Well, that's the last o' that little differculty! Jim Hackley'll never foller that up none,' they says. And what'd I say?"
"Well, what'd you say?"
"I says, 'Hell!' I says. 'You boys don't know Jim Hackley!'"