"I am going to give the lady the chance to see how an Englishman looks when he has to take his medicine." He looked at Diana. "She's sure a thoroughbred—she ain't batted an eye nor turned a hair. I'll bet a hundred to one she stays."
Diana could at that moment have passed out of the saloon, leaving Henry and Sir John there, but she saw only Jim. It was Jim—Jim in those strange clothes—Jim so bronzed, so strong, so masterful. What a contrast to Henry!
Cash waited for her answer. He adored playing to the gallery—this was heightening the situation beyond all expectation.
"She stays," he finally said. "Good! Gents, this is to be a nice, quiet, sociable affair—ladies are present. Any effort to create trouble will be nipped in the bud. Gents, to the bar."
He turned to Henry and Sir John as he spoke. He had a contempt for the men, but there was something about this quiet, dignified woman that embarrassed him, though he would have been the last to admit it. A few more drinks and he might be dangerous, but at present he was still master of himself. His game was to make Jim and his gang ridiculous before the strangers. Afterwards—well, then the serious settling of their score should come. He took a glass that was handed him across the bar and gulped down its contents.
Henry was whispering to Diana, "For God's sake, go—you can, and later we will follow you. This will be over in a minute." But Diana only held tighter the rail of the chair.
"We can't drink with this confounded bounder, Henry," Sir John expostulated. "It's too absurd, you know. Her Majesty's officers can't do a thing like that, now can they?"
"We must humor the drunken brute, Sir John, that's the only way out of it."
That Jim was there none of them acknowledged to each other. Events were assuming a strange unreality. What had been meant for a half-hours diversion was involving them in a highly dangerous situation. The saloon grew hotter—little air reached them through the barred doorway. Still Diana did not go. The old imperative cry, stifled for the last two years, awoke again. She forgot the dust, the hot saloon, the swaggering crowd of ranchmen. The noise and wild excitement fell on her unheeding ears. Jim was there, and his presence held her rooted to the spot.
Jim had moved into a corner at the lower end of the bar, and furtively watched Cash and his men.