I might hear of it." "Stranger," said Ben Creagan, "you can't play pool! I can't--and I beat you four straight games.

You better toddle your little trotters off to bed." The words alone might have been mere playfulness; glance and tone made plain the purposed offense.
The after-supper crowd in the hotel barroom had suddenly slipped away, leaving Max Barkeep, three others, and John Wesley Pringle--the last not unnoting of nudge and whisper attending the exodus.

Since that, Pringle had suffered, unprotesting, more gratuitous insults than he had met in all the rest of his stormy years.

His curiosity was aroused; he played the stupid, unseeing, patient, and timid person he was so eminently not.

Plainly these people desired his absence; and Pringle highly resolved to know why.