"Perhaps the Senor is sleepy!"
Finding himself the object of what seemed to him a particularly senseless joke, the New-Yorker crept forth, his face suffused with anger. Strangely enough, he still retained the pipe in his fingers.
"Say, are youse guys tryin' to kid me?" he demanded, roughly. Now that no firearm was in sight, he was master of himself again; and seeing the cause of his undignified alarm leaning against the table, he stepped toward him threateningly. "If you try that again, young feller, I'll chip you on the jaw, and give you a long, dreamy nap." He thrust a short, square fist under Willie's nose.
That scholarly gentleman straightened up, and edged his way to one side, Glass following aggressively.
"You're a husky, ain't you?" said the little man, squinting up at the red face above him. "Am I?" Glass snorted. "Take a good look!" With deliberate menace he bumped violently into the other. It was with difficulty he could restrain himself from crushing him.
Stover gasped and retreated, while Carara crossed himself, then sidled back of a bunk. Mr. Cloudy stepped silently out through the open door and held his thumbs.
"You start to kid me and I'll wallop you—"
"One moment!" Willie was transfigured suddenly. An instant since he had been a stoop-shouldered, short-sighted, insignificant person, more gentle mannered than a child, but in a flash he became a palpitating fury: an evil atom surcharged with such terrific venom that his antagonist drew back involuntarily. "Don't you make no threat'nin' moves in my direction, or you'll go East in an ice-bath!" He was panting as if the effort to hold himself in leash was almost more than he could stand.
"G'wan!" said Glass, thickly.
"You're deluded with the idea that the Constitution made all men equal, but it didn't; it was Mr. Colt." With a movement quicker than light the speaker drew his gun for the second time, and buried half the barrel in the New-Yorker's ribs.