was facing him nipped the corners of the cards idly
together and glanced up; saw Weary standing there with an elbow on the
bar looking at him, and pushed back his chair with an oath unmistakably
warlike. Weary resettled his hat and looked mildly surprised. The
bartender moved out of range and watched breathlessly.

"You ---- ---- --------!" swore Spikes Weber, coming truculently
forward, hand to hip. He was of medium height and stockily built, with
the bull neck and little, deep-set eyes that go often with a nature
quarrelsome.

Weary still leaned his elbow on the bar and smiled at him tolerantly.
"Feel bad anywhere?" he wanted to know, when the other was very close.

Spikes Weber, from very surprise, stopped and regarded Weary for a
space before he began swearing again. His hand was still at his hip,
but the gun it touched remained in his pocket. Plainly, he had not
expected just this attitude.

Weary waited, smothering a yawn, until the other finished a
particularly pungent paragraph. "A good jolt uh brandy 'll sometimes
cure a bad case uh colic," he remarked. "Better have our friend here
fix yuh up--but it'll be on you. I ain't paying for drinks just now."

Spikes snorted and began upon the pedigree and general character of
Irish. Weary took his elbow off the bar, and his eyes lost their
sunniness and became a hard blue, darker than was usual. It took a
good deal to rouse Weary to the fighting point, and it is saying much
for the tongue of Spikes that Weary was roused thoroughly.

"That'll be about enough," he said sharply, cutting short a sentence
from the other. "I kinda hated to start in and take yuh all to
pieces--but yuh better saw off right there, or I can't be responsible--"

A gun barrel caught the light menacingly, and Weary sprang like the
pounce of a cat, wrested the gun from the hand of Spikes and rapped him
smartly over the head with the barrel. "Yuh would, eh?" he snarled,
and tossed the gun upon the bar, where the bartender caught it as it
slid along the smooth surface and put it out of reach.

After that, chairs went spinning out of the way, and glasses jingled to
the impact of a body striking the floor with much force. Came the
slapping sound of hammering fists and the scuffling of booted feet,
together with the hard breathing of fighting men.

Spikes, on his back, looked up into the blazing eyes he thought were
the eyes of Irish and silently acknowledged defeat. But Weary wou