The older man got up and stood beside him: "There's nothin' to worry about, my boy. An' that's one of the first things you'll learn—not to worry. A dozen things can happen to delay anyone, an' they're hardly ever serious. If it'll ease your mind any, we'll ride down town, maybe she stopped to take in the excitement, an' if she ain't there we'll ride out on the trail a piece."
The scattering shots that followed the volley had ceased and as the two proceeded down the sandy street in silence, a light appeared suddenly in the Red Front, from whose doors issued a babble of voices as of many men talking at once. Dismounting, Colston and Endicott entered to see Barras standing upon the bar in the act of lighting the second of the two huge swinging lamps. "Looks like there'd been a battle," grinned Colston, eyeing the barricade of kegs, the splintered mirror, and the litter of broken glass.
"I'll tell a hand it was a battle!" vouchsafed a bystander. "That there Texian, onct he got a-goin', was some ructious! He made his brag that he was a wolf an' it was his night to howl. An', believe me! He was a curly wolf! An' he howled, an' by God, he prowled! An' he's prowlin' yet—him an' his woman, too."
"Texan!" cried Colston.
"Woman!" shouted Endicott. "What woman?"
"What woman d'ye s'pose?" growled Barras, glaring wrathfully from the bar. "I don't know what woman. His woman, I guess—anyways they got plumb away after we had him all seerounded, an' all over but the shoutin'—an' all on account of Timber City's got a marshal which his head's solid bone plumb through, like a rock; an' left the keg shoot wide open fer him to beat it!"
"If you're so damn smart, why didn't you think of the keg shoot?" retorted the representative of law and order. "You know'd it was there an' I didn't."
"You lie! Unless you've fergot a whole lot sence—" A crash of thunder drowned the irate bartender's voice.
"Hold on, Pete, don't git to runnin' off at the head an' say somethin' yer sorry fer——"
"You'd be the one to be sorry, if folks know'd——"