"Sure it would," he agreed promptly, his face beaming. Then he added cunningly: "But it's you folks are plumb scared."
"Who the h---- scared of a gal like that?" Mamie yelled at him, her eyes blazing. "I ain't. Are you, Lulu? You, Kit?" She turned to the other women, but ignored the protesting Sadie.
Lulu sprang from the arms of a man on whose shoulder she had been reclining.
"Scared?" she cried. "Come right on. I'm game. Beasley's keen to give her a twistin'--well, guess it's always up to us to oblige." And she laughed immoderately.
Kit joined in. She cared nothing so long as she was with the majority. And it was Beasley himself who finally challenged the recalcitrant Sadie.
"Guess you ain't on, though," he said, and there was something like a threat in his tone.
Sadie shrugged.
"It don't matter. If the others----"
"Bully for you, Sadie!" cried Mamie impulsively. "Come right on! Who's comin' to get the 'scream'?" she demanded of the men about her, while Beasley nodded his approval from his stand behind the bar.
But somehow her general invitation was not received with the same enthusiasm the occasion had met with earlier in the evening. The memory of the Kid still hovered over some of the muddled brains, and only a few of those who were in the furthest stages of drunkenness responded.
Nothing daunted, however, the girl Mamie, furiously anxious to stand well with the saloon-keeper, laughed over at him.
"We'll give her a joyous time," she shrieked. "Say, what's her name? Joan Rest, the Golden Woman! She'll need the rest when we're through. Come on, gals. We'll dance a cancan on her parlor table. Come on."
She made a move and the others prepared to follow. Several of the men, laughing recklessly, were ready enough to go whither they led. Already Mamie was within a pace of the closed door when a man suddenly pushed Abe Allinson roughly aside, leant his right elbow on the counter, and stood with his face half-turned toward the crowd. It was Buck. His movements had been so swift, so well calculated, that Beasley found himself looking into the muzzle of the man's heavy revolver before he could attempt to defend himself.
"Hold on!"
Buck's voice rang out above the din of the barroom. Instantly he had the attention of the whole company. The girls stood, staring back at him stupidly, and the men saw the gun leveled at the saloon-keeper's head. They saw more. They saw that Buck held another gun in his left hand, which was threatening the entire room. Most of them knew him. Some of them didn't. But one and all understood the threat and waited motionless. Nor did they have to wait long.