Again Britton was among those who came in, McCarthy and Long Mike both finding enough to justify a play, but they all took three excepting Stumpy, and he was quite easy in his mind when he bet two dollars. Britton was the only one to call, and he said, with a laugh: “I’ve a notion to raise you, but maybe you have them three kings again.” “I have,” said Stumpy, and scooped the pot again. They all stared, but Britton was the only one to speak. “If I was you,” he said, in a nasty way, “I wouldn’t play them kings so frequent. You might get beat on ’em next.” Now there are men to whom a remark of this sort may be made without immediate trouble, but such men are not Irishmen of the peculiar redness as to hair and beard that Stumpy had. He flared in an instant. “Oi’ll play thim cards whiniver Oi do be gettin’ thim to play,” he said, with great heat. “An’ if ony gintleman i’ th’ room, f’m La Crosse or any other place, has anything to say, Oi’d loike t’ hear what it is.” “Oh, well,” said Britton, “I said what I had to say. It don’t look well for any man to hold three kings all the time.” “Av it’s a question o’ looks,” said Stumpy, very coolly, but with evident wrath, “Oi don’t loike th’ looks o’ that nose you do be carryin’ round wid youse.” Britton looked around, but seeing that no one else at the table was likely to side with him in case of trouble, he controlled himself with an effort. “‘Tain’t as good-lookin’ as I’d like to have it,” he said, with a forced laugh, “but it’s the only one--” “An’ Oi do be thinkin’,” interrupted Stumpy, “it ud look a dom sight betther av it was longer.” “Perhaps it would,” said Britton, still reluctant to accept the quarrel, “but--” “But nothin’,” shouted Stumpy, reaching over and grasping the feature he had mentioned. “Maybe pullin’ it a little moight do it good.” And he gave it a mighty tweak. Two things only were possible after that, in Brownsville, and unfortunately for Mr. Britton he chose the wrong one. A stand-up fight with nature’s weapons would have established him as a person worthy of consideration, even though he had been well licked, but he was not in the habit of fighting in that fashion, and he reached for his gun. It was an unlucky movement. Long Mike sat next to him, and as they all rose to their feet in the excitement, the big man seized him by the wrist and the neck, and shaking him as a dog shakes a rat, he exclaimed: “Ye’ll pull no gun in Brownsville, ye double-jointed spalpeen, ye. An’ ye’ll understhand that any gintlemon in this town that wants to play kings, can play as many as he loikes, an’ as often as he loikes. An’ the loikes o’ yez can get back to La Crosse whin ye loike.” And after he had shaken Britton sufficiently, he threw him into the corner of the room. When the stage-sleigh was well out on the frozen river surface next day, Jim Bixby turned to his passenger and said, briefly: “Them fellers in Brownsville kind o’ stands by each other most generally.”