"All right," he said, feigning an indulgent smile, "you boys seem to be enjoyin' yourselves, so I'll jest deliver this United States mail as the law requires and leave you to yourselves." He stepped in behind the bar, chucked a couple of demijohns of whiskey into the corner where they might be overlooked, and threw the mail pouch on the counter. "Better come up and git your mail, boys," he observed, dumping the contents out for a lure. "Hey, here's a package for you, Mr. Dalhart—something pretty choice, I 'spect. Nothin' for you, Joe," he scowled, as his faithless retainer lurched up to claim his share. "Here's your paper, Babe. Letter for you, Mr. Dalhart," he continued, flipping a large, official envelope across the bar, "you're developin' quite a correspondence!" He ducked down behind the counter, grinning at his stratagem, and while Pecos and Babe were examining their mail he managed to jerk the money drawer open and slip the loose change into his pockets. "Well, we'll be goin' home now, Joe," he said, taking the corral boss briskly by the arm. "Come on, _hombre_, you ain't got no mail!" Under ordinary circumstances José would have followed peaceably, thus reducing the revolutionary forces to a minimum, but the covert insult to his daughter, magnified by drink, had fired his Latin blood. "No, Señor," he replied, fixing his glittering eyes upon the hateful boss. "_Yo no go! Carramba, que malo hombre!_ You dam' coward, Creet—you scare my wife—you scare—" "Shut up!" hissed Crit, hastily cuffing him over the head. "Shut your mouth or I'll—" "_Diablo!_" shrieked the Mexican, striking back blindly. "I keel you! You have to leave _mi niña_ alone!" "What's that?" yelled Angevine Thorne, leaping with drunken impetuosity into the fray, "hev you been—" "Leave him to me!" shouted Pecos, wading recklessly into the scrimmage. "I'll fix the blankety-blank, whatever he's gone and done! Throw him loose, boys; I'll take the _one-eyed_—_hump-backed_—_dog-robbin'_—_dastard_"—he accompanied each epithet with a blow—"and tie 'im into a bow knot!" He grabbed Old Crit out of the _mêlée_ and held him against the wall with a hand of iron. "What do you mean by slappin' my friend and cumrad?" he thundered, making as if to annihilate him with a blow. "I want you to understand, Old Cock Eye, that Mr. Garcia is my friend—he comes from a fine old Spanish family, away down in Sonory, and his rights must be respected! Ain't that so, Angy?" "From the pure, Castilian blood," declaimed Angy, waving his hand largely, "a gentleman to whom I take off my hat—his estimable wife and family—"