CHAPTER VIII
THE STARLIGHT
"Where you going?" demanded Swing Tunstall.
"Over the hills and far away to pick the wild violets," chanted Racey."You wanna come along? Better not. Them violets are just too awfulwild. Dangerous. Yeah. Catch yore death."
"You idjit! You plumb fool! Can't you let well enough alone? Ain't yousatisfied till yo're ticklin' the mule's hind leg? If yo're crowded,hop to it. Make 'em hard to find. But why go a-huntin' trouble? Whatsasense? What--"
"Always get the jump on trouble, Swing. Always. Then you'll findtrouble don't wear so many guns after all and is a heap slower aboutpulling 'em than you thought likely."
"But if they're all four of 'em together now, and you--"
"I ain't said I was going to do anything, have I? Gawda-mighty, Swing,I only want to go and ask how Nebraska's gettin' along. Only tryin' tobe neighbourly. Yeah. Neighbourly."
Racey Dawson nodded his head as one does when a subject is closed,hitched up his chaps, and started blithely round the hotel. SwingTunstall followed in haste, caught up with his friend and fell intostep at his side.
"This ain't any of yore muss, Swing," Racey said, mildly.
"It's gonna be," was the determined reply. "You shut up."
Racey grinned at nothing and stuck his tongue in his cheek. A warmlypleasant glow permeated his being. It was good to have a friend likeSwing Tunstall--one who would not interfere but who would be in alertreadiness for any contingency. And Racey was well aware that in hisimpending visit to the Starlight the contingencies were apt to be manyand varied.
"It's so early in the day I don't guess none of 'em will be in thedance hall yet," murmured Swing Tunstall.
"I'm gonna drop in on the Starlight first, anyway," said Racey. "It'snearer."
Through a side window they inspected the Starlight and the customersthereof. Only two customers were visible. These, a long man and ashort man, stood at the bar, their backs to the window and their handscupped lovingly round glasses of refreshment. The tall man was talkingto the bartender.
"This getting up so early in the mornin' is a fright," they heardhim complain. "But bunking with a invalid shore does keep you on thejump."
He and his companion drank. Racey Dawson and Swing Tunstall glidedrapidly along the wall to a side entrance. When the tall man and theshort man set down their glasses Racey Dawson was leaning against thebar at a range of approximately six feet. Swing Tunstall stood at hisback and slightly to the right. Thus that, should necessity warrant aresort to lethal weapons, Racey might not mask the latter's fire.
"Liquor," said Racey to the bartender.
The latter, an expert at his trade, with a jerk of both wrists slidtwo glasses and a bottle down the bar so that a glass stopped in frontof each man and the bottle came to a standstill between them. Raceyspun a dollar on the bar. The bartender nonchalantly swept the dollarinto the cash drawer and resumed his chit-chat with the tall man. Atwhich Racey's eyes narrowed slightly. But he made no comment.
Pouring out a short drink, he passed the bottle to his comrade. WhenSwing had filled Racey took the bottle, drove home the cork with theheel of his hand, and carefully tucked away the bottle in the innerpocket of his vest.
"It won't ride any too well," he observed to Swing, "but it ain'tgonna be there a great while, I guess."
"You bet it ain't gonna be there a great while!" horned in theoutraged bartender. "You put that bottle back on the bar!"
"Why, I gave you a dollar," said Racey, nervously, hesitantly, "andyou kept the change. I supposed, of course, you was selling me thebottle."
"You supposed wrong!" As he spoke the bartender's right hand movedtoward the shelf that Racey knew must be under the top of the bar."That dollar was for yore two drinks."
"You mean to say yo're charging four bits apiece for those drinks!"
"Shore I am." As yet the bartender's hand had remained beneath the bartop.
"But two bits is the regular price," objected Racey, weakly.
"Four bits is the price to you," was the truculent statement, stickingout his chin. "_Put that bottle back on the bar_!"
As he gave the order his right shoulder hunched upward, and hisface set like iron. He had what is known as a "fighting" face, thisStarlight bartender. It was evident that he banked largely on thatface. It had served him well in the past.
"One dollar is my regular price for a bottle," Racey said gentlyas the bartender's hand suddenly nipped into sight clutching asixshooter, "but if you want it back, take it."
Racey's fingers gripped the bottle-neck and fetched it forth. Butinstead of placing it on the top of the bar as requested, he continuedthe motion, as it were, and smote the bartender across the headwith it. Being a quart bottle and reasonably full of liquid, thebartender's chin came down with a chug on the bar. Then he slumpedquietly to the floor behind the bar. The sixshooter relinquished byhis nerveless fingers remained on top of the bar between the whiskeyglasses.
Racey stared speculatively at the long man and the short man. They inturn regarded him with something like respect. The long man wore adrooping, streaky-yellow horseshoe of a moustache dominated by a longand melancholy nose. Flanking the base of this sorrowful nose was apair of eyes hard and bright and the palest of blue.
The short man was a blobby-nosed creature, who sported a three days'growth of red beard and a quid of chewing in the angle of a heavy jaw.Now he revolved the tobacco with a furtive tongue and spat thicklyupon the floor.
Without removing his eyes from the two aforementioned gentlemen Raceyreached for the bartender's gun. "Hadn't oughta be trusted withfirearms," he observed, pleasantly, referring to what lay behind thebar. "Too venturesome. Yeah."
He thoughtfully lowered the hammer of the sixshooter and rammed itdown to the trigger-guard behind the waistband of his trousers.
"Do you gents know anybody named Doc Coffin?" inquired Racey.
"I'm him," nodded the tall man, the pale eyes beginning to glitter.
"Then maybe you can tell me how Nebraska Jones is gettin' along?"
"You worrying about his health?" put in the short man.
"I dunno as I'd say 'worrying' exactly," disclaimed Racey, easily."You can take it I'm just askin', that's all."
"Nebraska had oughta be as well as ever he was in about a month,"supplied Doc Coffin. "And," he added, significantly, "I dunno but whathe'd oughta be able to shoot as well as ever."
"I don't doubt it a mite," said Racey with a smile. "Question is, willhe?"
The short man gave a short, harsh laugh. "He will, you can gamble onthat," he averred, and spat again.
"That's good hearing," Racey said, looking quite pleased. "Of course Iwas only judging by past performances."
"His gun caught," Doc Coffin explained, kindly.
"Why don't he try filing off his foresight?" inquired Racey, chattily."Or else he could shoot through his holster. Lots of folks do businessthat way. I suppose now you'll be seeing Nebraska in a day or twomaybe."
"I might," admitted Doc Coffin.
"Friend of his?" purred Racey.
"I might be." Doc Coffin's spare frame grew somewhat rigid.
"Well," Racey drawled softly, "I heard Nebraska's friends are lookingfor me. I'm here to save 'em the trouble of strainin' their eyes."
"So that's it, huh?" Doc Coffin grinned, as he spoke, like a grievingwolf. "They ain't no hurry, is they?"
"I expect I'll be round Farewell a spell," said Racey.
"Then they ain't no hurry," Doc Coffin told him smoothly.
"None a-tall," contributed the short man.
"That's the way to look at it," laughed Racey. "I shore don't careanything about bein' pushed. Have a drink on me."
He slid in their direction the bottle with which he had knocked downthe bartender, and, accompanied and imitated by Swing Tunstall,departed from that place crabwise.
When they were gone Doc Coffin looked at his companion.
"Asking for it, Honey," said Doc Coffin.
"Just asking for it."
Then he went behind the bar, seized the senseless bartender by theankles and skidded him out on the barroom floor. The man whom DocCoffin had addressed as Honey (his other name was Hoke) spread hislegs and whistled when he glimpsed the three-inch cut running fore andaft along the top of the bartender's skull. Blood from that cut haddribbled and oozed over the major portion of the bartender's face andshirt. For it had been the bartender's luck to hook his chin on theedge of the lowest shelf when he dropped and he had perforce remainedcrown upward.
Doc Coffin stood back and stared at the stertorously breathing lump onthe floor with a cold eye.
"Ain't he a mess?" he observed. "Ain't he a mess? I expect he'll beright down peevish about it when he comes to."
"Think so?" Honey Hoke was not quite sure of the point of Doc'sremark.
"Yeah, I think so. I'm shore he will when I tell him how he waskicked."
"Kicked?"
"Shore kicked. Kicked after he was down."
"How?"
"Didn't you see that feller Dawson kick Bull when he was down? Wherewas yore eyes?"
"That's the way of it, huh? Well, it _might_ save trouble if Bull wasto go on the prod real vicious."
"Yo're whistlin'. They ain't no manner of reason for doin' a jobyoreself if you can get somebody else to do it for you."
When Bull came to he was lying on his cot in his little cubby holeadjoining the back room of the Starlight. Over across from the bed DocCoffin was looking out of the grimy window. Behind the closed doorgiving egress to the back room certain folk were busy at faro. "Kingwin, ten lose," the dealer was saying.
Doc Coffin turned at the rustle of Bull's slight movement. Doc noddedgrimly.
"How's the head?" he inquired.
Bull put up a hand to the bandage encircling his bullet head and sworefeelingly.
"Guess it does hurt some," was Doc's comment. "Doc Alton tookthree stitches. Lucky you was still senseless. He had to use aharness-needle."
Bull heartily damned Doc Alton, his methods, the faro players in thenext room, himself, and wound up with a blistering curse directedagainst mankind in general and Racey Dawson in particular.
"Tha's right, Bull," Doc Coffin applauded dryly. "Cuss him out. Givehim hell. Must do you a lot of good."
Bull was understood to consign Doc Coffin to the region of lost souls.
"I'd go a leetle slow," advised Doc Coffin, gently. "Just a leetleslow if I was you. Yo're on yore back now, but you'll be getting allright in a li'l while, and it's just possible, Bull, I might take itinto my head to ask you what you meant by all them cuss words yo'rethrowin' at me."
There was an icy glint in the pale blue eyes of Doc Coffin. Bull shutup and subsided.
"What," queried Doc Coffin after a momentary silence, "was the matterwith you?"
"With me?"
"Shore, with you. Who'm I talking to? What was the matter with you,anyway? Don't you know any better'n to go up against a jigger likethat Dawson man? Yo're too cripplin' slow with a gun, feller."
"Well, I--"
"Y'oughta had him twice while he was swinging that bottle.... Yeah,twice, I'm tellin' you. You had time enough. But not you. You juststood there like a bump on a log and let him hit you. Yo're afine-lookin' example of a two-legged man, you are. If you ain'tcareful, Bull, some two-year-old infant is gonna come along and spitin yore eye."
"He was so damn quick," alibied Bull. "I wasn't expectin' it."
"A whole lot of folks are underground because they didn't expect toget what they got. Yo're lucky to be lyin' there with only a headache.Still, alla same, he needn't 'a' kicked you."
"Huh? Kicked me? You mean to say he kicked me? Dawson kicked me?"
"Shore I mean to say Dawson kicked you. Kicked you when you was lyin'there down and out and senseless."
A moment Bull lay quietly. Then when the full import of Doc Coffin'swords had percolated through and through his brain he pulled himselfto a sitting posture and swung a leg to the floor. Doc Coffin wasbeside him instantly.
"Lie down, you idjit!" commanded Doc Coffin, and with no gentle handshoved Bull down upon his pillow. "Whadda you think yo're gonna do?"
"I'm goin' out and fill that ---- full of lead."
"Oh, you are, huh? Yo're gonna do all that? Tha's fine. Do you want aquiet burial or a regular funeral?"
"Say--"
"Say yoreself, and say something sensible while yo're about it."
"Nobody can kick me and get away with it!" Bull declared,passionately. "I'll--"
"Maybe you will, but not in a hurry. You start out after him now, andyou wouldn't last as long as a short drink in a roomful of drunkards.Didn't you hear about Dawson's li'l run-in with Nebraska?"
"Hell, I _seen_ it!"
"You seen it, huh? And you _know_ what he done to you to-day, andstill you wanna paint for war now and immediate? No, Bully, nota-tall. You listen to me. I got a better plan. A whole lot betterplan. Lookit...."