"What I done to the burro ain't nothin' t' what I'd do t' that hound uh hell!" he declared, pounding the table with his good fist.
Homeless, friendless; but Joe was his friend, and Paw and Hank were his friends--and besides them there was in all the world not one friend of Casey Ryan's.-They were good friends and good fellows, even if they did put too much hoot in their hootch.
Casey Ryan liked his hootch with a hoot in it.
He was still hooting (somewhat incoherently it is true, with recourse now and then to the bottle because he was sick and he didn't give a darn who knew it) when the door opened and he whom they called Mart walked in.-Joe introduced him to Casey, who sat still upon the bench and looked him over with drunken disparagement.-Casey had a hazy recollection of wanting to see the boss and have it out with him, but he could not recall what it was that he had been so anxious to quarrel about.
Mart was a slender man of middle height, with thin, intelligent face and a look across the eyes like the old woman who rocked in the stone hut.-He glanced from the bottle to Casey, eyeing him sharply.-Drunk or sober, Casey was not the man to be stared down; nevertheless his fingers strayed involuntarily to his shirt collar and pulled fussily at the wrinkles.
"So you're the man they've been holding here for my inspection,"
Mart said coolly, with a faint smile at Casey's evident discomfort. "You're still hitting it up, I see. Joe, take that bottle away from him.-When he's sober enough to talk straight, I'll give him the third degree and see what he really is, anyway.
Guess he's all right--but he sure can lap up the booze.-That's a point against him."
Casey's hand went to the bottle, beating Joe's by three inches.
He did not particularly want the whisky, but it angered him to hear Mart order it taken from him.-Away back in his mind where reason had gone into hiding, Casey knew that some great injustice was being done him; that he, Casey Ryan, was not the man they were calmly taking it for granted that he was.
With the bottle in his hand he rose and walked unsteadily to his bunk. He did not like this man they called the boss.-He remembered that in his bunk, under the bedding, he had concealed something that would make him the equal of them all.-He fumbled under the blankets, found what he sought and with his back turned to the others he slipped the thing into his sling out of sight.
Mart and Joe were talking together by the table, paying no attention to Casey, who was groggily making up his mind to crawl into his bunk and take another sleep.-He still meant to have it out with Mart, but he did not feel like tackling the job just now.
Mart turned to the door and Joe got up to follow him, with a careless glance over his shoulder at Casey, who was lifting a foot as if it weighed a great deal, and was groping with it in the air trying to locate the edge of the lower bunk.-Joe laughed, but the laugh died in his throat, choked off suddenly by what he saw when Mart pulled open the door.
Casey turned suspiciously at the laugh and the sound of the door opening.-He swung round and steadied himself with his back against the bunk when he saw Mart and Joe lift their hands and hold them there, palms outward, a bit higher than their heads.
Something in the sight enraged Casey unreasoningly.-A flick of the memory may have carried him back to the old days in the mining camps when Casey drove stage and hold-ups were frequent.
"What 'r yuh tryin' to pull on me now?" he bawled, and rushed headlong toward them, pushing them forcibly out into the open with a collision of his body against Joe.-Outside, a voice harshly commanded him to throw up his hands--and it was then that Casey Ryan's Irish fighting blood boiled and bubbled over.
Unconsciously he pushed his hat forward over one eye, drew back his lips in a fighting grin, stepped down off the low doorsill with a lurch that nearly sent him sprawling and went weaving belligerently toward a group of five men whose attitude was anything but conciliatory.
"Casey Ryan!-I'm dogged if it ain't Casey!" exclaimed a familiar voice in the group, whereat the others looked astonished. Through his slits of swollen lids Casey glared toward the voice and recognized Barney Oakes, grinning at him with what Casey considered a Judas treachery.-He saw two men step away from Joe and the boss, leaving them in handcuffs.
"Take them irons off'n my friends!" bellowed Casey as he charged.
