“Mike,” he said to the Mexican, Miguel Santos, “you know I ain’t in the habit of betraying cold feet. But I got some business to tend to. Colorado,” he added to the proprietor, “I’ll settle when I come in again. I’m in a hurry.”
With the quickness of a cat he slipped through the crowd about the table and Smithy and shot for the door. But the parson was at his elbow before he could get through the portal.
“You’d better keep out of this, Willie,” Hurley said between his teeth. “There’s goin’ to be the devil to pay in a minute.”
“It is as much my business as it is yours, Joe,” said Hunt, in step with his long stride on the side-walk where they headed toward the Grub Stake. “And we must do something before those fellows back there wake up.”
“What?” was Joe’s startled ejaculation.
“That stupid Smithy has started something. Some of those fellows will be out after us in a minute, and if they get to the Grub Stake before we straighten things out, there will be trouble.”
“Trouble? Youbetcha there’ll be trouble! And you’d better keep out of it, Willie.”
“I mean to stop it,” said Hunt softly.
But Joe Hurley did not hear him. He turned abruptly and burst into the main entrance of the Grub Stake. It did not take Joe Hurley’s trained glance to see that something had happened here. Hunt sensed, too, that if there had already been trouble, more of the same kind was expected.
The girl who usually presided at the door—the girl who parked your gun if you wanted to play, or your spurs if you wanted to dance and gave you checks in return for them—had got out of the way. Several of the gaming tables were empty. There was not a man standing in front of the bar, and Boss Tolley’s assistants behind the “rosewood” had “stepped out.”