Later in the evening somebody tramped on Moleskin Joe and awoke him.
"Who the hell thinks I'm a doormat?" he growled on getting to his feet, and glowered round the room. No one answered. He went out with Carroty, and the two of them got as drunk as they could hold. I was in bed when they returned, and Carroty, full of a drunken man's courage, challenged me again to "put them up to him." I pretended that I was asleep, and took no notice of his antics, until he dragged me out of the bed. Stark naked and mad with rage, I thrashed him until he shrieked for mercy. I pressed him under me, and when he could neither move hand nor foot, I told him where I was going to hit him, and kept him sometimes over two minutes waiting for the blow. He was more than pleased when I gave him his freedom, and he never evinced any further desire to fight me.
"It's easy for anyone to thrash poor Carroty," said Joe, when I had finished the battle.
On Sunday we got drunk together in a speak-easy[8] near the model, and it was with difficulty that we restrained Carroty from challenging everybody whom he met to fistic encounter. By nightfall Moleskin counted his money, and found that he had fourpence remaining.
"I'm off to Kinlochleven in the morning," he said. "There's good graft and good pay for a man in Kinlochleven now. I'm sick of prokin' in the gutters here. Damn it all! who's goin' with me?"
"I'm with you," gibbered Carroty, running his fingers through the "blazing torch"—the term used by Joe when speaking of the red hair of his mate.
"I'll go too," I said impulsively. "I've only twopence left for the journey, though."
"Never mind that," said Moleskin absently. "There's a good time comin'."
Kinlochleven is situated in the wilderness of the Scottish Highlands, and I had often heard of the great job going on there, and in which thousands of navvies were employed. It was said that the pay was good and the work easy. That night I slept little, and when I slept my dreams were of the journey before me at dawn, and the new adventures which might be met with on the way.