If psychological moments come to the Cassidys, this one felt such a thing near him. Now was the time for him to leap in the air and pound wrathfully upon the bar. Now was the instant for him to rush into the open and call vociferously on his friends. Now was the fraction of a second left for him to reach out his hard knuckles and pin Mike to the wall and tear the paper from his hands. But instead, and with a queer feeling of aloofness from it all, much as if he were the helpless spectator of activities proceeding in some fantastic dream, he felt the moment thrilling up to him; felt it stand obediently waiting; felt himself slowly gathering in response to its mute query; then felt himself drop helplessly back into a stupid coma of whisky fumes and sodden inertia.
When he came to, Mike had put the paper back in his till and was assiduously cleaning up his bar. It was all over.
Cassidy shifted irresolutely from one foot to the other. A sickening feeling of hollowness within him was crying aloud to be appeased by either food or drink, and his shaking body begged for a place to rest itself into tranquillity; but still for a while he stood there, fighting off these yearnings while he gathered his far-strayed wits. Now and then he weakly attempted to catch the other's eye, but as Mike studiously refused to be caught, Cassidy could only blink owlishly and fumble again with the tangled ends of the skein. Finally, abandoning it all as useless, he turned toward the door, yet arrested his dazed shambling to ask one last question.
"How's that?" Mike responded vaguely over his shoulder. "Still harping on that, are you?"
"Did I really sell you them blacks?" ventured Cassidy quaveringly, controlling his voice only with a tremendous effort. "Reelly, truly—did I sell 'em?"
Mike rolled a cigar over in his mouth, with a complacent lick of his tongue. "That's what," he replied laconically.
Cassidy gulped down something in his throat. He leaned for a moment against the door-jamb; his gaunt, hollow-cheeked face quivered with misery.
"I mean them black wheelers, Mike. Just them two—them wheelers," he pleaded. Hesitating a little, as the other deigned no response, he ventured weakly on:
"I was figurin', now—of course, I don't mean nothin' by it, Mike, only yuh see how a feller c'u'd figger it—that mebbe—mebbe you made some mistake in readin' that paper. Yuh see how it could happen. A feller c'u'd make a mistake in readin', now, c'u'dn't he?" With this flimsy appeal Cassidy played his last and poorest card.
In answer the other snapped some ashes from his sleeve, turned his back, slapped the cash-register shut, and strode masterfully down the room. "Not this time, pardner."