CHAPTER XX—FIRE
Angel McCoy did not ride back to the JML with Langley that evening. He had a few drinks at the Red Arrow and decided to stay a while. Langley tried to argue him into going back to the ranch, but Angel was stubborn. Whiskey usually affected him that way, so Langley rode on alone.
Sorensen, Blackwell, and Weed were trying to spend the money they had drawn from Reimer, and with them Angel found congenial companionship. They were deliberately getting drunk. Angel was able to drink a lot of whiskey and still not show it in his actions, but his talk usually gave him away. He became rabid, devilish; an anarchist without a bomb. Even the other cowboys wished that Angel would hang up his gun before he began drinking.
“Where’s that sheriff?” he demanded, after the rest of the boys had grown goggle-eyed. “He’s the whipperwill I’m layin’ for.”
“What did Slim ever do to you?” asked the bartender.
“Hit me,” snarled Angel. His pale face looked yellow in the lamplight, like old ivory, and his eyes glistened.
“Hidju?” queried Boomer Weed. “Whaffor?”
“None of yore business!”
“Hidju hard?”
“I told yuh to shut up, didn’t I?”