One of the enemy, a stocky fellow with a brakeman's black shirt, was constructing sandwiches of sliced bologna and rye at the lunch counter. "I know you're not eating much lately, old boy, since you begun stringing with Coffey," smiled Jack from the corner of his mouth, "but those is for our customers." Blackshirt turned quickly about, sweeping the pink hemisphere of cheese upon the floor and shivering it. "Oh, dreadful!" he protested, falsetto. "My word, how sad!" He trod some of the cheese into the sawdust. "Mr. Barman, ah, Mr. Barman, you may charge the damages to me--at the Blackstone." There was a roar of laughter from the others. It looked like rough-housing, and damage to fixtures. The scat players had vanished, in their naïve Teutonic way, through the side door. Jack began to hope he wouldn't have to draw, for a shooting always black-eyes a saloon's good name and quiet scat custom shies at it. Neal delivered Jim a tremendous thump on the shoulder. "Why, if it isn't my dear old college chump." Another thump. "Maybe you can buy us a drink with the collar off." A third thump. "Now, can the comedy stuff, Coffey," Jim snarled, smilingly. If only he could steer Coffey away from the fight he seemed bent on picking. "I'll buy--sure. Why not?" "Then you'll go across the street to do it," Jack inserted. "This ain't a barrel house." Neal seized Jim's ear and lifted him to his feet. "You'll buy here, and now." Three of the men gathered about Jim. The other two, standing well apart, were watching Jack. There would be three pistols out, or none. Jim was being slowly propelled to the bar, when the straw doors swung briskly and the big fellow entered. His shoulders, hands, legs and jaw were thick, and his eyes were amazingly alert. Unspeakable peace spread through Jim. He knew that somehow or other the big fellow was going to get him out of this. Indeed, that was what the boss had come for. News of the foray on this citadel of his had been grapevined to him up the block and around a corner. He sized up the situation very quickly. There was Coffey Neal, the trouble-maker, the Judas who had refused to take his orders any longer. He was the one to be done for. The other four were merely Hessians, torsos, not headpieces. They slugged for a living, on either side of industrial disputes, according to the price--sometimes on both sides in the same strike. "Have a drink, boys," said the great Ed Miles. It surprised every man in the room. Jim's heart sank down again. Could it be that the big fellow was going to take water? Then it was the end of his reign and the end of Jim's days at court. There was a pause, a whispering. Ed, standing sidewise to the bar, held his open right hand, palm upwards, behind his coat so that only Jack could see it. "And what if we wouldn't!" Coffey spoke with slow bravado.