CHAPTER V
As has been intimated elsewhere in this story, San Pasqual has the reputation of being a “tough” town. This is due in a large measure to the fact that it is a division terminal, and at all division terminals train crews must reckon with that element in our leisure class which declines to pay railroad fare and elects to travel on brake-beams rather than in Pullman sleepers. Having been unceremoniously plucked from his precarious perch, the dispossessed hobo, finding himself stranded in a desert town where the streets are not electrically lighted, follows the dumb dictates of his stomach and the trend of his abnormal ambition, and promptly “turns a trick.” Occasionally there is an objection on the part of the “trickee” and somebody gets killed. Naturally enough, it follows that the sound of pistol shots is frequently heard in the land, and since it happens nine times out of ten that the argument is between transients, the permanent resident is not nearly so interested in the outcome as one might imagine—particularly when the shooting takes place at night and beyond the town limits.
Harley P. Hennage had crossed from the eating-house, and had just reached the porch of the Silver Dollar saloon, when above the whistling of the “zephyr” he heard the muffled reports of three pistol shots. One “Borax” O'Rourke, a “mule-skinner” from up Keeler way, who had just arrived in San Pasqual to spend his pay-day after the fashion of the country, heard them also.
“Down the tracks,” O'Rourke elucidated. “Tramps fightin' with a railroad policeman, I guess. Let's go down.”
“What's the use?” objected Mr. Hennage. “A yegg never does any damage unless he's right on top of his man. They all carry little short bulldog guns, an' I never did see one o' them little bar pistols that would score a hit at twenty yards after sundown. They carry high.”
At that instant the sound of another shot was heard, but faintly.
“That's the hobo” announced Mr. Hennage with conviction. “Them first three shots came from a life-size gun.”
Half a minute passed; then came the report of six shots, following so quickly upon each other that they sounded almost like a volley.
“Nine shots” commented “Borax” O'Rourke. “That's an automatic.”