“This,” said Higgins, “is my job!”
The Pilot was leaning wrathfully over the bar, his face thrust belligerently forward, alert for whatever might happen. The bartender struck at him. Higgins had withdrawn. The bartender came over the bar at a bound. The preacher caught him on the jaw in mid-air with a stiff blow, and he fell headlong and unconscious. They made friends next day–the boy being then safely out of town. It is not hard for Higgins to make friends with bartenders. They seem to like it; Higgins really does.
It was in some saloon of the woods that the watchful Higgins observed an Irish lumber-jack empty his pockets on the bar and, in a great outburst of joy, order drinks for the crowd. The men lined up; and the Pilot, too, leaned over the bar, close to the lumber-jack. The bartender presently whisked a few coins from the little heap of gold and silver. Higgins edged nearer. In a moment, as he knew–just as soon as the lumber-jack would for an instant turn his back–the rest of the money would be deftly swept away.
The thing was about to happen, when Higgins’s big hand shot out and covered the heap.
“Pat,” said he, quietly, “I’ll not take a drink. This,” he added, as he put the money in his pocket, “is my treat.”
The Pilot stood them all off–the hangers on, the runners, the gamblers, the bartender (with a gun), and the Irish lumber-jack himself. To the bartender he remarked (while he gazed contemptuously into the muzzle of the gun) that should ever the fellow grow into the heavy-weight class he would be glad to “take him on.” As it was, he was really not worth considering in any serious way, and had better go get a reputation. It was a pity–for the Pilot (said he) was fit and able–but the thrashing must be postponed for the time.
Further to illustrate the ease with which the lumber-jack may be robbed, I must relate that last midwinter, in the office of a Deer River hotel, the Pilot was greeted with hilarious affection by a boy of twenty or thereabouts who had a moment before staggered out from the bar-room. The youngster was having an immensely good time, it seemed; he was full of laughter and wit and song–not yet quite full of liquor. It was snowing outside, I recall, and a bitter wind was blowing from the north; but it was warm and light in the office–bright, and cosy, and companionable: very different, indeed, from the low, stifling, crowded, ill-lit bunk-houses of the camps, nor was his elation like the weariness of those places. There were six men lying drunk on the office floor-in grotesque attitudes, very drunk, stretched out and snoring where they had fallen.