Boston didn’t say much of nothing at first, seeming to be took up with trying to make out where Santa Fé belonged to––hitching on his eye-glasses and looking him over careful, but only getting puzzleder the more he stared. You see, Charley––in them black clothes and a white tie on––looked for certain sure like he was a minister; and there he was getting up red-hot from dealing faro, and having on 134 each side of where he set at the table a forty-five gun. It was more of a mix-up than Boston could manage, and you could see he didn’t know where he was at. Howsomedever, Wood had told him he’d better make out to be friendly, and take just what happened to come along without asking no questions; and I reckon the shoat really meant, as well as he knowed how to, to do what he was told. So he give up trying to size Santa Fé, and said back to him he was obliged and was feeling hearty; and then he took to grinning, like as if he wanted to make things pleasant, and says: “Really, I am very much interested in my surroundings. This place has quite the air of being a barbarian Monte Carlo. It really has, you know.”
That was a non-plusser for Charley––and Santa Fé wasn’t non-plustered often, and didn’t like it when he was––but he pulled himself together and put down what cards he had: telling Boston monte was a game he sometimes played with friends for amusement––which was the everlasting truth, only 135 the friends mostly was less amused than he was––and he’d had a dog named Carlo, he said, when he was a boy.
Boston seemed to think that was funny, and took to snickering sort of superior. He was about a full dose for uppishness, that young feller was: going on as if he’d bought the Territory, and as if the folks in it was the peones he’d took over––Mexican fashion––along with the land. Then he said he guessed Santa Fé did not ketch his meaning, and Monte Carlo was the biggest gambling hell there was.
Being in the business, Santa Fé was apt to get peevish when anybody took to talking about gambling; and Boston’s throwing in hell on top of it that way was more’n he cared to stand. He didn’t let on––at least not so the fool could see it––his dander was started, setting on himself being one of the things his work trained him to; but the boys noticed he begun to get palish up at the top of his forehead––where there was a white streak between his hair and where his hat come––and all hands knowed that for a bad 136 sign. Boston, of course––being strangers with him––didn’t know what Charley’s signs was; and he just kept on a-talking as fresh as his green clothes.
“Not less psychologically than sociologically,” says he, “is it interesting to find in this slum of the wilderness the degenerate Old-World vices in crude New-World garb. Here,” says he, jerking his head across to the table, “is a coarse reproduction of Monaco’s essence; and there, I observe, are other repulsive features equally coarse”––and he jerked his head over to where Shorty Smith was setting up drinks for Carrots at the bar.
“If you dare to say one word more about my features, young man,” says Carrots––having a pug-nose, Carrots was techy about her features; and she had a temper the same color as her hair––“I’ll smack you in the mouth!”
“And Oi’ll smack your whole domn head off!” put in Blister Mike. “D’you think Oi’m going to have ladies drinking at my bar insulted by slush like you?” And Blister 137 reached down to where he kept it among the tumblers to get his gun.
It looked as if there was going to be a ruction right off. There was Carrots red-hotter than her hair; and Blister, who was special friends with Carrots, shooting mad at having anybody sassing her; and Santa Fé’s forehead getting whiter and whiter; and all hands on their hind legs at having Palomitas called a slum of the wilderness––and likely worse things said about the place in words nobody’d ever heard tell of longer’n your arm. The only one keeping quiet was Wood. He was sure, Wood was, trouble was coming beyond his stopping; and as he knowed which side his bread was buttered, and how he’d be fired from his job if things happened to go serious, he just went and sat down in a corner and swore to himself sorrowful, and was about the miserablest-looking man you ever seen alive. I guess it was more’n anything else being pitiful for Wood made things take the turn they did when the Sage-Brush Hen come into the game.
“Now you all hear me!” the Hen sung out sudden––and as the Hen wasn’t much given to no such public speaking, and the boys was used to doing quick what she wanted when she asked for it, everybody stopped talking and Blister put his gun down on the bar. Most of us, I reckon, had a feeling the Hen was going to let things out in some queer way she’d thought of in that funny head of hers––same as she’d done other times when matters was getting serious––and we all was ready to help her with any skylarking she was up to that would put a stop to the rumpus and so get Wood out of his hole. As for Boston––being too much of a fool to know what he’d done to start such a racket––he was all mazed-up by it: staring straight ahead of him like a horse with staggers, and looking like he wished he’d never been born.