"When I ask anyone to drink with me, he most generally does it," he sneered, "Or I know the reason why."
"There's the reason!" roared Brent, and quick as a flash his right fist smashed into the man's face, the blow knocking him clean across the room. The next instant a man sprang onto Brent's back and another dived for his legs, while a third struck at him with a short piece of scantling. Brent fought like a tiger, weaving this way and that, and stumbling about the room in a vain effort to rid himself of the two men who clung to him like leeches. Stumpy staggered toward him, and Brent making a frenzied effort to release one of his pinioned arms,
saw him raise the heavy quart whiskey bottle. The next instant it descended with a full arm swing. Brent saw a blinding flash of light, a stab of pain seemed to pierce his very brain, his knees buckled suddenly and he was falling, down, down, down, into a bottomless pit of intense blackness.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE FIGHT AT CUTER MALONE'S
The porter at Cuter Malone's Klondike Palace was lighting the huge oil lamps as the girl called Kitty sauntered to the bar with her dancing partner who loudly demanded wine. Cuter Malone himself, standing behind the bar in earnest conversation with Johnnie Claw, set out the drinks and as the girl raised her glass, a man brushed past her. She recognized Zinn, one of Malone's despicable lieutenants, and was quick to note that something unusual was in the air. A swift meaning glance passed between Claw and Malone, and as Zinn stepped around the bar to deposit his rifle, he whispered earnestly to the two who stepped close to listen.
Unperceived, Kitty managed to edge near, and the next instant she was all attention. For from the detached words that came to her ears, she made out, "Ace-In-The-Hole," and "the girl," and then Malone, whose voice carried above the others issued an order, "The shack behind the saw mill. Git him soused. Knock him out if you have to—but don't kill him. Once we git the girl here me an'
Claw—" the rest of the sentence was lost as it blended with an added order of Claw's. "Ace-In-The-Hole!" thought Kitty, "What did it mean? And who is 'The girl?' Ace-In-The-Hole is dead. And, yet—" she glanced toward Claw whose beady eyes were glittering with excitement. "He just came back from somewhere—maybe he knows—something."
She saw Zinn cross the room and speak in a whisper to four men who were playing solo at a table near the huge stove. She knew those men, Stumpy Cooley, and his three companions. The men nodded, and went on with their game, and Zinn returned and resumed his conversation with Malone and Claw. But the girl could hear nothing more. The "professor" was loudly banging out the notes of the next dance upon the piano, and her partner was pulling at her arm.
For two hours Kitty danced, and between dances she drank wine at the bar, and always her eyes were upon the four men at the solo table, and upon Zinn, who loafed close by, and upon Malone and Claw, who she noted, were drinking more than usual, as they hob-nobbed behind the bar.