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"All right.... Then let them ask my permission." Pastiri thrust his face into the bully's, and looking him straight in the eye, croaked: "Do you realize, Valencia, that you're getting altogether too damned high and mighty?" "You don't say!" sneered Valencia, calmly continuing his game. "Do you know that I'm going to let you have a couple with my fist?" "You don't say!"

To add to this deafening roar of cries and shouts, two organs pierced the air with the merry wheeze of their blending, interweaving tones. Manuel, El Bizco and Vidal strolled to the head of El Rastro and turned down again. At the door of Las Americas they met Pastiri sniffing around the place.

Doesn't anybody want to drink with me? My treat." "I'll have one," said a tall, bent fellow with a sickly air, who was called El Pastiri. He arose and came over to Leandro. Leandro ordered more wine and amused himself by laughing loudly when any one lost and in betting against Valencia. Pastiri took advantage of the opportunity to empty one glass after the other.

"And maybe we won't let him hear a few things," said the escaped convict, "if he has the nerve to return here for his share of the winnings." "I should say!" exclaimed Pastiri. "Very well, gentlemen, it's my treat now," said Leandro, "for I've got the money and I happen to feel like it." He fished out a couple of coins from his pocket and slapped them down on the table.

"That's what," replied another of the players, a grim old jailbird who had escaped from the Ceuta penitentiary and who looked just like a fox. "When a guy has the nerve, he rakes in all the dough," and he made a gesture of scooping up all the coins on the table in his fingers "and he skips." "But this Valencia is a coward," said Pastiri in his thick voice.

"Here's a five-peseta piece," he declared, ringing the coin upon the ground, He picked out the right card and won. Pastiri made a gesture of anoyance. The rustic wagered another duro and lost; he glanced anxiously at his fellow countrymen, extracted another duro and lost that, too.

That night Pastiri was saturated with alcohol and had lost all power of speech. Manuel, who had drunk a little too much, was beginning to feel sick and considered how he might manage to make his escape; but by the time he had made up his mind the tavern-keeper's brother was already locking the door.

"Ole!" shouted Pastiri enthusiastically, in his husky voice. Leandro drew from the inside pocket of his sack-coat a long, narrow knife; the onlookers retreated to the walls so as to leave plenty of room for the duellists. Paloma began to bawl: "You'll get killed! You'll get killed, I'm telling you!"

It was a sad, painful sight; all the partizans of the bully began to eye him with scorn. "Now, you yellow-liver, you show the white feather!" shouted Pastiri. "You're flitting about like a grasshopper. Off with you, my boy! You're in for it! If you don't get out right away you'll be feeling a palm's length of steel in your ribs!" One of Leandro's thrusts ripped the bully's jacket.

Pastiri drew back with drunken awkwardness and began to hunt in the inside pocket of his coat for his knife, amidst the derisive laughter of the bystanders. Then all at once, with a sudden resolve, Leandro jumped to his feet, his face as red as flame; he seized Valencia by the lapel of his coat, gave him a rude tug and sent him smashing against the wall.