ll you if you
do--he's bad actor--robbed me twice. What's matter--ain't you got the
dollar bill?"

"You said a thousand dollars!" spoke up the barkeeper breathlessly.

"Well, thousand dollar bill, then. Ain't you got it--what's the matter?
Aw, gimme another drink--you're nothing but a bunch of short sports."

He shook his head and sighed and as the barkeeper began to sweat he
caught the hanger-on's eye. It was Pisen-face Lynch and he was winking
at him fiercely, meanwhile tapping his own pocket significantly.

"I can get it," ventured the barkeeper but Wunpost ignored him.

"You're all short sports," he asserted drunkenly, waving his hand
insultingly at the crowd. "You're cheap guys--you can't bear to lose."

"Hey!" broke in the barkeeper, "I said I'd take you up. I'll get the
thousand dollars, all right."

"Oh, you will, eh?" murmured Wunpost and then he shook himself together.
"Oh--sure! Yes, all right! Come on, we'll start right now!"

CHAPTER XI

THE STINGING LIZARD

In a certain stratum of society, now about to become extinct, it is
considered quite _au fait_ to roll a drunk if circumstances will
permit. And it was from this particular stratum that the barkeeper at
The Mint had derived his moral concepts. Therefore he considered it no
crime, no betrayal of a trust, to borrow the thousand dollars with which
he was to pay John C. Calhoun from that prince of opportunists, Judson
Eells. It is not every banker that will thrust a thousand dollar
bill--and the only one he has on hand--upon a member of the
bungstarters' brotherhood; but a word in his ear from Pisen-face Lynch
convinced Fellowes that it would be well to run straight. Fate had
snatched him from behind the bar to carry out a part not unconnected
with certain schemes of Judson Eells and any tendency to run out on his
trusting backers would be visited with summary punishment. At least that
was what he gathered in the brief moment they had together before Lynch
gave him the money and disappeared.

As for John C. Calhoun, a close student of inebriety might have noticed
that he became sober too quick; but he invested their departure in such
a wealth of mystery that the barkeeper was more than satisfied. A short
ways out of town Wunpost turned out into the rocks and milled around for
an hour; and then, when their trail was hopelessly lost, he led the way
into the hills. Being a stranger in the country Fellowes could not say
what wash it was, bu