"Sent me? Sent me where?"
"I've seen back-country pros before. You're a Sunday-afternoon pug, a winner-take-all man who doesn't fight for fun. Who's paying you?"
"You killed a friend of mine. That's enough."
Hobson tipped up the bottle of beer, drank deeply, set it down. Tesno laid his cigar on the edge of the bar.
Hobson took one leisurely step forward, then charged, lashing out with his great fists. Throwing up his hands to guard his head, Tesno turned sideways and aimed his left foot at Hobson's left knee. He took a sledgehammer blow on the shoulder that knocked him off balance, but not till he had got his boot sole against the knee. Twisting with his weight against it, he felt the kneecap slide out of place.
Hobson gave a strange little yelp of pain. Stumbling, he grabbed his knee with both hands. Tesno was on him like a cat, seizing him by the hair, hauling him forward. Then he plunged his own knee into the man's face to send him careening into a poker table and off it to the floor in an avalanche of cards and chips. Dazed and awkward, bleeding from his mouth, Hobson struggled to get to his feet. Tesno caught him at the base of the skull with a short brutal rabbit-punch that dropped him open-mouthed and motionless in the filthy sawdust of the floor.
For a moment, nothing broke the silence. Then someone cursed reverently. "God! God almighty damn!" And a rooster cry rose from the end of the bar—the little Irishman, no doubt.
Tesno sauntered to the bar and stuck the cigar between his teeth. "Some of you boys pick him up," he said. "Lug him to the jail."
The little Irishman broke from the crowd, gesturing to others. Four of them turned Hobo Hobson on his back preparatory to lifting him. But Pete Madrid stood over them, muttering something, and they straightened. Madrid faced Tesno tensely.
"Who in hell do you think you are?" Madrid said. "You've no authority to jail a man."