The other three went out quietly at a side door without meeting any one, and the noisy crowd in the barroom drowned all sound of their egress. Five minutes’ walk brought them to the Red Tiger Saloon, a place of ill repute, even for this wild country. There the cutthroats and gamblers congregated, and scarcely a week in the year passed without its tragedy at the Red Tiger. Card disputes sometimes ended in wholesale shooting, and, only two weeks before, three funerals resulted from one night’s rough house in the infamous inn.
When Buffalo Bill and his pards arrived the crowd had reached a stage of drunkenness which dulled its perception, and the strangers were unnoticed. Several men were stretched out on benches and floor in drunken stupor, and others were drinking or wrangling as to whose turn it was to treat. Others were attempting, with drunken persistence, to play cards, but the stakes at the corners were knocked about by gesticulating elbows, and coins rolled about the floor.
Cayuse looked about for a moment, and then approached the scout. In a low tone he said:
“Price play cards with heap fool drunks; steal um money; Dave drunk.”
The scout easily picked out Price, and when opportunity offered approached unnoticed. He also secured a good look at the debauched face of Dave, so that he could recognize the fellow if they ever met again.
Price was too drunk to be acute, but he was still sharp enough to rake in all the money of those with whom he was pretending to play.
Buffalo Bill closely watched the manipulations of this representative of Uncle Sam, and was soon convinced that the fellow was an unmitigated scoundrel who would rob his best friend if opportunity offered.
One man at the table, a miner, had been robbed of his last cent, despite his protest of unfairness. And then the inevitable row was started. The victim bunglingly attempted to pull a gun, and his motion was followed by half a dozen others who were grouped about the table.
Price was not so far intoxicated as the others, and deftly jerked a gun to a level with the other’s breast. Somebody in the crowd accidentally or otherwise discharged a revolver. A fusillade followed, principally into the floor and ceiling, but when the smoke cleared the man who had been robbed by Price was on the floor writhing with a bullet through his body, and Price was pushing through the drunken, shouting men with a smoking revolver in his hand. He had shot the man he had robbed and was getting away before officers arrived.
There was no doubt regarding who had shot the miner, in the mind of Buffalo Bill.