“I’m buyin’ a drink for everybody!” yelled Otto Falk, proprietor of the Short Horn saloon. “Come and get it.”
The crowd was willing. They needed something strong now.
“I’ve got a perfectly good team out there some’ers, draggin’ what used to be a bear cage,” complained Hank Stagg. “They’ll prob’ly be plumb ruined; but I’m goin’ to have a drink. By , I’m through with grizzly bears. That big son-of-a-gun was jist about to glom that poor little kid.
“Wasn’t he sore? Whoo-ee! I betcha that grizzly could ’a’ whipped all the lions in Africky. Might as well try to stop a railroad ingine. Quick, too; quick as ”
“My hat’s ruined, too,” complained Slim ruefully. “That bear done his war-dance on it and then some of these heavy-heeled cow-persons walked all over it. They’re so ignorant that they don’t know what a hat is, ’less it’s on somebody’s head.”
Baldy Malloy headed straight toward his own shack, going down the main street, clinging tightly to Whizzer, who was willing to ride, even if he did not understand what it was all about.
As they came past McGill’s saloon, McGill, a portly, hard-faced man, stopped them and asked Baldy what had caused all the excitement up the street. There were three other men with McGill.
“Didn’t yuh see it?” asked Baldy hoarsely.
“Wouldn’t ask you, if we did?” growled McGill. “We was playin’ poker and heard them shots fired.”