The Three Crosses by Max Brand

Author:Max Brand [Brand, Max]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Western
Publisher: Roy Glashan's Library
Published: 2015-04-14T22:00:00+00:00

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IX. — SIPPING BEER

THERE were, at this time, nearly twenty men in the long, narrow room. Voices were loud, and the air was filled with smoke that merely helped to darken the corners, but which rose in a cone of brilliant bluish-white underneath the lamp that hung from the ceiling just over the center of Tod Randal’s bar.

The voice of the newcomer rang out loudly and thrust back, as though with a hand, everyone who was leaning against the bar.

Then the voice of McGuire muttered at Home’s ear: “It’s Stuffy Malone! What’s Stuffy got ag’in’ you?”

“I dunno,” said Home.

“I’ll stand by you,” said McGuire, with a desperate sincerity.

“You back out of this,” said Barry Home, in words that were afterward remembered and repeated. “You couldn’t help me. Nobody could help me.”

McGuire, though very reluctantly, consulted his safety sufficiently to draw back a little from his newly made friend.

“You!” shouted the great voice. “You’re what I want! You’re the meat that I’m gonna chew on! You, Barry Home!”

And still Barry did not turn his head. Well, it hardly mattered. It was all destiny. If he were doomed, as now it seemed certain, to die at the hand of this scoundrel, this professional murderer and jailbird, then that was the way he would fall. There was no question about that. There was no need for excitement, either. Better this than falling over a cliff, say, or being caught in a burning building. So he did not even turn his head, and, when he raised his hand, it was to lift his glass of beer to his lips.

Stuffy Malone, not unnaturally, put a wrong interpretation on the attitude of the other. He roared out: “You ain’t gonna hear me, eh? I’ll open your ears for you, you sneaking lowlifer, you lying hound of a played-out cowpuncher!” His stamping stride advanced down the floor of the barroom. A very odd and startling thing happened then.

Barry Home’s quiet voice was heard saying: “I’ll kill you presently, Stuffy, but don’t bother me till I’ve finished my beer.”

It stopped Stuffy Malone. Everything instantly was placed upon a different basis. There was no rough and tumble about this. This was a challenge given and accepted. And Stuffy Malone was not more astonished than relieved, astonished that such an observant fellow as this new cowpuncher should remain so calm in his presence, and delighted above all that now it was to be a fair fight, with warning given and taken. Then his own matchless gun play would finish the encounter in the proper way. So he halted, just on the verge of the cone of light that descended through the smoke from the lamp above.

Barry Home conjured out of the past the unsavory picture of the monster. He was worthy to figure as the illustration of an ogre in a child’s fairy book. He was one of those fellows who are slim to the age of twenty-five or six, and then are swelled and bloated by steady dissipation.

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