toddle, for these customers
are very small and tender and grimy, but each small face is alight with
joyous welcome, and they hail him with rapturous acclaim. Even the few
tired-looking mothers, peeping from windows or glancing from doorways,
smile and nod and forget awhile their weariness in the children's
delight, as Ravenslee, the battered hat cocked at knowing angle,
proceeds to "business." Shrill voices supplicate him, little feet patter
close around him, small hands, eagerly outstretched, appeal to him. Anon
rise shrieks and infantile crowings of delight as each small hand is
drawn back grasping a plump paper bag--shrieks and crowings that
languish and die away, one by one, since no human child may shriek
properly and chew peanuts at one and the same time. And in a while, his
stock greatly diminished, Ravenslee trundles off and leaves behind him
women who smile still and small boys and girls who munch in a rapturous
silence.

On he went, his oven whistling soft and shrill, his long legs striding
between the shafts, until, reaching a certain bleak corner, he halted
again, though to be sure there were few people hereabouts and no
children. But upon the opposite corner was a saloon, with a large annex
and many outbuildings behind, backing upon the river, and Ravenslee,
lounging on the handles of his barrow, examined this unlovely building
with keen eye from beneath his hat brim, for above the swing doors
appeared the words:

O'ROURKE'S SALOON

He was in the act of lighting his pipe when the doors of the saloon were
swung open, and three men came out, in one of whom he recognised the
tall, powerful figure and broad shoulders of Bud M'Ginnis; his
companions were remarkable, but in very opposite ways, the one being
slender and youthful and very smartly dressed, with a face which,
despite its seeming youth, was strangely haggard and of an unhealthy
pallor, while the other was plethoric, red-faced and middle-aged, a man
hoarse of voice and roughly clad, and Ravenslee noticed that this fellow
lacked the upper half of one ear.

"Saturday night, mind!" said M'Ginnis, loud and authoritative.

"But say, Bud," demanded the smartly dressed youth, "what's coming to us
on that last deal?"

"Nix--that's what you get, Soapy!" The youth's pale cheek grew livid.

"So you've got the deck stacked against us, eh, Bud?" said he.

"I got a close mouth, Soapy, I guess you don't want me t' open it very
wide--now or any other old tim