Mulligan Lane ran at the rear of the stores, saloons, and other amusement places facing this side of Main Street. Colorado Brown’s cabaret was not far from Tolley’s rear door. It was dusk of rather a sultry day—a day that had forecast the heat of the approaching summer.
Tolley lounged under the withered cottonwood behind Brown’s dance-pavilion. The sign of the flood’s highwater mark—that flood of twenty years before—had been cut by some idle knifeblade deep into the bole of the tree high over Tolley’s head, and he was a tall man. A sallow-faced, bony giant of a man was Tolley, hairy and brawny, without a redeeming feature in his cruel countenance. Had he not possessed, in the memorable words of Bill Judson, “a wishbone where his backbone should have been,” Boss Tolley would have been a very dangerous man. Lacking personal courage he depended upon the backing of men like Hicks and his bouncer, Macpherson.
He slouched now under the tree and waited—a sullen lump of a figure whose dark garments blended with the shadowy trunk as the night fell. The small figure coming up the slope of the lane approached the back door of Colorado Brown’s place without seeing the man until almost within arm’s length.
“Hey, Nell!” She started, looked up, stepped back a pace. “Don’t be scare’t of me.”
“Don’t flatter yourself, Tolley,” replied the girl curtly.
“I want to speak with you.”
“I don’t want to speak to you.”
“Say—listen! You ain’t treating me right. You walked out and left me flat. You didn’t even ask me for a raise. How’d you know I wouldn’t give you as much as Brown does?”
“I didn’t want to know. I got through. You didn’t have any hold on me, Tolley.”
“Mebbe not. Mebbe I have. You better listen,” for the girl was turning scornfully away. “You and Dick played it low down on me.”