Very well. It was not a thing to laugh over, certainly, but it was not to be mended by groans. So, if men might neither groan nor laugh, they could drink. And liquor was becoming cheaper in Comanche. It was the last big night; it was a wake. "Well, I'll tell you," said Walker, "I don't think we'd better look for him too hard, for if we found him he wouldn't be in any shape to take back there by now." "You mean he's celebrating his good luck?" asked Bentley. "Sure," Walker replied. "Any man would. But I don't see what he wanted to go off and souse up alone for when he might have had good company." "I think you've guessed wrong, Walker," said Bentley. "I never knew him to take a drink; I don't believe he'd celebrate in that way." Even if he had bowled up, protested Walker, there was no harm in it. Any man might do it, he might do it himself; in fact, he was pretty sure that he _would do it_, under such happy conditions, although he believed a man ought to have a friend or two along on such occasions. From place to place they threaded their way through the throng, which ran in back-currents and cross-currents, leaving behind it upon the bars and gaming-tables an alluvium of gold. Dr. Slavens was not at any of the tables; he was not reeling against any of the bars; nor was he to be seen anywhere in the sea of faces, mottled with shadows under the smoky lights. "Walker, I'm worried," Bentley confessed as they stood outside the last and lowest place of diversion that remained to be visited in the town. "I tell you, it flies up and hits a man that way," protested Walker. "Sheep-herders go that way all of a sudden after a year or two without a taste of booze, sometimes. He'll turn up in a day or two, kind of mussed up and ashamed; but we'll show him that it's expected of a gentleman in this country once in a while, and make him feel at home." "Yes, of course," Bentley agreed, his mind not on the young man's chatter nor his own reply. "Well, let's run through this hole and have it over with." Inside the door four dusty troopers, on detached duty from the military post beyond Meander, sat playing cards. As they appeared to be fairly sober, Walker approached them with inquiries. No, they hadn't seen Dr. Slavens. Why? What had he done? Who wanted him? Explanations followed. "Well," said a sergeant with service-stripes on his sleeve and a broad, blue scar across his cheek, "if I'd 'a' drawed Number One you bet you wouldn't have to be out lookin' for me. I'd be up on the highest point in Comanche handin' out drinks to all my friends. Ain't seen him, pardner. He ain't come in here in the last two hours, for we've been right here at this table longer than that." They passed on, to look upon the drunken, noisy dance in progress beyond the canvas partition. "Not here," said Walker. "But say! There's a man over there that I know." Bentley looked in that direction. "The one dancing with the big woman in red," directed Walker.