'em out; but for
eleven years they saw me. If we haven't been seen coming in here by
some of this Calabasas bunch, I miss my guess," declared Lefever
cheerfully.

The batten door behind the bar now began to open slowly and
noiselessly. Lefever peered through it. "Come in, Pedro," he cried
reassuringly, "come in, man. This is no officer, no revenue agent
looking for your license. Meet a friend, Pedro," he continued
encouragingly, as the swarthy publican, low-browed and sullen, emerged
very deliberately from the inner darkness into the obscurity of the
barroom, and bent his one good eye searchingly on de Spain. "This,"
Lefever's left hand lay familiarly on the back of de Spain's
shoulder, "is our new manager, Mr. Henry de Spain. Henry, shake hands
with Mexico."

This invitation to shake hands seemed an empty formality. De Spain
never shook hands with anybody; at least if he did so, he extended,
through habit long inured, his left hand, with an excuse for the
soreness of his right. Pedro did not even bat his remaining eye at the
invitation. The situation, as Lefever facetiously remarked, remained
about where it was before he spoke, and nothing daunted, he asked de
Spain what he would drink. De Spain sidestepped again by asking for a
cigar. Lefever, professing he would not drink alone, called for
cigarettes. While Pedro produced them, from nowhere apparently, as a
conjurer picks cards out of the air, the sound of galloping horses
came through the open door. A moment later three men walked, single
file, into the room. De Spain stood at the left end of the bar, and
Lefever introduced him to Gale Morgan, to David Sassoon, and to
Sassoon's crony, Deaf Sandusky, as the new stage-line manager. The
later arrivals lined up before the bar, Sandusky next to Lefever and
de Spain, so he could hear what was said. Pedro from his den produced
two queer-looking bottles and a supply of glasses.

"De Spain," Gale Morgan began bluntly, "one of our men was put off a
stage of yours last week by Frank Elpaso." He spoke without any
preliminary compliments, and his heavy voice was bellicose.

De Spain, regarding him undisturbed, answered after a little pause:
"Elpaso told me he put a man off his stage last week for fighting."

"No," contradicted Morgan loudly, "not for fighting. Elpaso was
drunk."

"What's the name of the man Elpaso put off, John?" asked de Spain,
looking at Lefever.

Morgan hooked his thumb toward the man standing at h