There was no formality of introduction. The Inger merely scanned the crowd, flashing a smile at one or two of the women who nearly pleased him. When the drinking began, it was to one of these that he lifted his glass. But when immediately she came and sat beside him, linking her arm in his, he drew away laughing, and addressed the crowd at large.
“What’s up?” he demanded. “What’s doin’?”
“B-basket o’ peaches,” volunteered one of the cow punchers, who early in the day had begun to observe the occasion. “B-Bunchy’s complimumps!”
When the improvised curtain of sheets drew back, revealing ten or twelve half-clothed strange women, the Inger understood. This was Bunchy’s magnanimous contribution to the general jollity of his marriage night.
“Let me have an absinthe,” he said to the barkeeper.
The man leaned across the bar and whispered something.
“No absinthe!” shouted the Inger. “What the hell kind of a joint is this?”
“Leadpipe Pete licked up the bottom of the bottle,” growled the barkeeper, pointing with the stump of a thumb.
The Inger looked. Beside him a big ranchman, swarthy and sweaty and hairy, was just lifting to his lips a tall tumbler of the absinthe. He leered at the Inger, closed one eye, and began to drink luxuriously. The Inger leapt a pace backward; and in an instant a bullet crashed through the glass, shattered it, and the man stood, dripping, with the bottom of the tumbler in his hand. The bullet buried itself in the tin mirror of the bar.
“About how much do I owe you for the lookin’ glass?” inquired the Inger, easily, resting his elbows on the bar. “And charge me up with Pete’s drink he’s mussed himself up with so bad. What’ll be the next one, Pete?”
“Leave Pete name the damages,” said the barkeeper, unconcernedly wiping up the liquid.
“You’re too hellish handy with your tools, you are,” grumbled Pete, combing the glass from his beard. “Make it brandy, neat.”
“Brandy, neat, one two,” repeated the Inger. “_Bein’_ your absinthe has run out.”
Presently he strolled up the street toward the hotel, where the evening’s interest centred. He glanced indifferently into the saloons, nodded a greeting when he wished, but more often ignored one. At a corner a beggar, attracted to the little place from some limbo where news of the wedding had filtered, held out his cap.