Several sprang between the two men. The room was in an uproar. Peter barked, clamant, frantic. Everybody tried to talk at once. In the background the faro dealer ceased shuffling his cards, and began imperturbably, indifferently, to pack together his layout. He had made little that night. After a moment he went out, without a glance toward the excited group.
The men were forcing the blinded and raving Harry toward the door. Mike leaned over the bar, watching with bright eyes, his arms folded across his chest and the pistol barrel peeping over the crook of one elbow.
When they had all gone out, most of them shouting good-natured farewells, he turned savagely on the pale-faced Mudge. The native cruelty of the man blazed forth. He scored the barkeeper with a tongue that lashed like a whip, vituperating, crushing with the weight of his sarcasm, frightening with the vividness of his threats. Mudge shrank back into the corner of the space behind the bar, spreading his arms along either side, watching the half-breed with wide-open fascinated eyes, as one would watch a dangerous wild beast.
After a little the storm passed. Lafond asked in surly tones where the bunk was. Frosty showed him his own, behind the saloon, in a little shack of hewn timbers. Without a word Lafond turned in, dressed as he was, and closed his eyes. For a time he ruminated slowly. He had seen his man, and already he could put his finger on one weak point in Billy's personality--love of the spectacular, of bombast. A blow to his vanity would hurt. The half-breed had also taken fair measure of most of the other men in the room. He knew how to ingratiate himself, and his bold move in the case of Cheyenne Harry had had that object directly in view. He did not as yet see clearly just what form his blow to Billy's vanity was to take, but that would come with time. Lafond's calling and his position in the new town gave him unlimited opportunities for observation, and he was in no hurry. After waiting fifteen years, another twelvemonth would not matter.
His doze was abruptly broken by Frosty's scared voice asking a question. The barkeeper's thick wits could not take in the situation. He was frightened almost out of his senses, and incapable of consecutive thought.