is neighbor frowned,
grunted and threw down his hand. The third man did the same. Irish made
another sweep of his hand and raked the table clean of chips.

"That'll do for tonight," he remarked dryly. "I don't like to be a hog."

Had that ended the incident, sensitive readers might still read and
think well of Irish. But one of the players was not quite sober, and he
was a poor loser and a pugnacious individual anyway, with a square
face and a thick neck that went straight up to the top of his head. His
underlip pushed out, and when Irish turned away, to cash in his chips,
this pugnacious one reached over and took a look at the cards Irish had
held.

It certainly was as rotten a hand as a man could hold. Suits all mixed,
and not a face card or a pair in the lot. The pugnacious player had
held a king high straight, and he had stayed until Irish sent in all his
chips. He gave a bellow and jumped up and hit Irish a glancing blow back
of the ear. Let us not go into details. You know Irish--or you should
know him by this time. A man who will get away with a bluff like
that should be left alone or brained in the beginning of the
fight--especially when he can look down on the hair of a six-foot man,
and has muscles hardened by outdoor living. When the dust settled, two
chairs were broken and some glasses swept off the bar by heaving bodies,
and two of the three players had forgotten their troubles. The third was
trying to find the knob on the back door, and could not because of the
buzzing in his head and the blood in his eyes. Irish had welts and two
broken knuckles and a clear conscience, and he was so mad he almost
wound up by thrashing Rusty, who had stayed behind the bar and taken
no hand in the fight. Rusty complained because of the damage to his
property, and Irish, being the only one present in a condition to
listen, took the complaint as a personal insult.

He counted his money to make sure he had it all, evened the edges of the
package of bank notes and thrust the package into his pocket. If Rusty
had kept his face closed about those few glasses and those chairs, he
would have left a "bill" on the bar to pay for them, even though he did
need every cent of that money. He told Rusty this, and he accused him of
standing in with the nesters and turning down the men who had helped him
make money' all these years.

"Why, darn your soul, I've spent money enough over this bar to buy out
the whole damn joint, and you kno