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Updated: May 2, 2025
In the Forest Queen bar-room was the biggest bank there was in town. Blister Mike he was Irish, Blister was, and Sal's bar-keep had some sort of a share in it; but it was run by a feller who'd got the name of Santa Fé Charley, he having had a bank over in Santa Fé afore Sal give him the offer to come across to Palomitas and take charge.
"Tim didn't hit him; but I guess he felt like th' man who met the bear without any weapon, even a newspaper would 'a' come handy. He hands in his time t' once and quits. Sence then he's been as mad as a bar-keep with a lead quarter, which ain't usual for Tim. He's been filin' his teeth for M. & D. right along. Somethin's behind it all, I reckon." "Where'll I find him?" asked Thorpe.
"Then, kin he walk?" insisted the bar-keep. Jim said, "What do you s'pose he's wearin' pants for, if he couldn't?" "Put him down and leave us see him, then." "This ain't no place for a child to be walkin' 'round loose," objected the gray old miner. "He'll walk some other time." "Aw, put him down," coaxed the smith. "We'd like to see a little feller walk.
In less time than a week, however, his wife leaves him; an' also that drink-shop wherein he officiates is blown down by a high wind. "'That bar-keep emerges from the rooms of his domestic hopes an' the desolation of that gin mill, an' endows a lady of his acquaintance with this opal ornament. It ain't twenty-four hours when she cuts loose an' weds a Mexican.
He waited, however, by the side of the moaning little pilgrim. Then, half an hour later, Bone, the bar-keep, came up to see him, in haste and excitement. They stood outside, where the visitor had called him for a talk. "Jim," said Bone, "you're in fer trouble. Parky is goin' to jump your claim to-night it bein' New Year's eve, you know at twelve o'clock. He told me so himself.
What had been hate in the eyes of Billy changed slowly to incredulous contempt. "Ain't that enough?" he cried disgustedly. "My God, ain't yuh man enough Have I got to take yuh by the ear and slit your gullet like they stick pigs or else let yuh go? What are yuh, anyhow? Shall I give my gun to the bar-keep and go out where it's dark? Will yuh be scared to tackle me then?"
What he needed most in this hour was a bottle of American rye-whisky and a friendly American bar-keep to talk to. He regretted now that in his idle hours he hadn't hunted up one against the rainy day. The barmaids had too strongly appealed to his sense of novelty. So he marched into the street, primarily bent upon making the favourable discovery.
"'This terrifies him; he begins to believe in the evil innocences of opals. He presents the jewelry to a bar-keep, who puts it up, since his game limits itse'f to sellin' licker an', him bein' plenty careful not to drink none himse'f, his contracted destinies don't offer no field for opals an' their malign effects.
It wrapped him all about and hid him in its fury, and when the calmer falling of the flakes commenced he had disappeared around the shoulder of the hill. The men to whom the bar-keep told the story of Jim and his start into the mountains smiled again. The light in their eyes was half of affection and half of concern.
McGuire Ellis raised a tuneful baritone in song: 'You may think you've got 'em going, said the bar-keep to the bum. 'But cheer up And beer up. The worst is yet to come! "Unless my estimate of E.M. Pierce is wrong," he continued, "you'll begin to hear from the other newspapers soon." So it proved. Advertising managers called up and talked interminably over the telephone.
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