ace and broken nose were lighted up with a frightful smile. He was
good-natured now, but the next drink might set him wild. Hank stood
behind the high pine bar, a broad but nervous grin on his round, red
face. Two big kerosene lamps, through a couple of smoky chimneys, sent
a dull red glare upon the company, which half filled the room.

If Steve's face was unpleasant to look upon, the nonchalant, tiger-like
poise and flex of his body was not. He had been dancing, it seemed, and
had thrown off his coat, and as he talked he repeatedly rolled his blue
shirt-sleeves up and down as though the motion were habitual to him.
Most of the men were sitting around the room looking on and laughing at
Steve's antics, and the antics of one or two others who were just drunk
enough to make fools of themselves. Two or three sat on an old billiard
table under the window through which John was peering.

Lime sat in his characteristic attitude, his elbows upon his knees and
his thumbs under his chin. His eyes were lazily raised now and then with
a lion-like action of the muscles of his forehead. But he seemed to take
little interest in the ribaldry of the other fellows. John measured both
champions critically, and exulted in the feeling that Steve was not so
ready for the row with Lime as he thought he was.

After Steve had finished his story there was a chorus of roars: "Bully
for you, Steve!" "Give us another," etc. Steve, much flattered, nodded
to the alert saloon-keeper, and said: "Give us another, Hank." As the
rest all sprang up he added: "Pull out that brandy kaig this time,
Hank. Trot her out, you white-livered Dutchman," he roared, as Swartz
hesitated.

The brewer fetched it up from beneath the bar, but he did it
reluctantly. In the midst of the hubbub thus produced, an abnormally
tall and lanky fellow known as "High" Bedloe pushed up to the bar and
made an effort to speak, and finally did say solemnly:

"Gen'lmun, Steve, say, gen'lmun, do'n' less mix our drinks!"

This was received with boisterous delight, in which Bedloe could not see
the joke, and looked feebly astonished.

Just at this point John received such a fright as entirely took away his
powers of moving or breathing, for something laid hold of his heels with
deadly grip. He was getting his breath to yell when a familiar voice at
his ear said, in a tone somewhere between a whisper and a groan:

"Say, what they up to all this while? I'm sick o' wait'n' out there."