Buck laughed from his heart. "If there ’s anything you don’t think of make a note of it an’ let me see it," he commended. "What a rummy remark. I say, how—ha! ha!" and Whitby’s bunk creaked to his mirth. "That’s rather a neat one, you know! I did n’t know you were Irish, Peters, blessed if I did! I must tell that to your man Friday—it will keep the bally ass combing his frowsy locks for a week." Buck had one foot on the Slumberland boundary when he heard the voice again, seeming to have travelled a long distance: "And I believe I should be rewarded for my brilliancy. I ’ll ask your partner to send some brandy and a box of _good_ cigars with the rest of it as my fee. I ’ll have to learn to smoke all over again," he complained drowsily. A raucous snore bounced off the partition and Whitby opened his eyes for a moment: "My word, if Friday could only cook as well as he snores!" CHAPTER XIII PUNCTUATION AS A FINE ART Twin River was in full blast when Dave rode in, looking for Tex. He dropped off the pony and went into the Why-Not, but his man was not there; after a few unavoidable drinks—Dave could not have avoided one if it had invited from the middle of the Staked Plain—he looked in at Ike’s and the I-Call. He sampled the liquor in both places but evidently Comin’ Thirty was not in that part of the town and he jogged on up to the Sweet-Echo. He had not been in here since warned off by Slick, but fear of consequences had nothing to do with absenting himself; fear did not enter into his composition. Dave’s fundamental fault lay in his hatred of being beaten. It had lead him to cheat at play; to outwit by foul means; to take the sure course to any desired end, deliberately regardless of what any one might think. The danger of such actions did not deter him in the least; he was always ready, usually overwhelmingly ready, to back them up in any manner his opponents demanded of him. The defeat, sure to be met when he opposed a superior intelligence, he confidently relied upon overcoming by sheer force of personality, mistaking violence for strength, deceit for ingenuity. The bad judgment of his failures ever wore the mantle of bad luck; and the thought and time he wasted in schemes for revenge might have been used more profitably in making success of his failure. Since his employment by Schatz his mind had been fully occupied by the furtherance, as he considered it, of his employer’s plan. Buck Peters, the Englishman, even Slick, at times pricked his memory, but he had resolutely put them aside until a more convenient season. Now, with whiskey spurring his Satanic temperament, he considered it obligatory to go into the Sweet-Echo. He wanted to find Comin’ and no fancy bar-keep’ nor roaring Scotchman should keep him from going wherever he wanted to go. He stepped from his stirrup onto the porch and went into the bar-room as if he owned it.