By the time he had finished drinking and faced about, the
little man with the carroty-blond hair was on his feet. Alan stared, and
the little man grinned. His ruddy cheeks grew pinker. His blue eyes
twinkled, and in what seemed to be a moment of embarrassment he gave his
gun a sudden snap that drew an exclamation of amazement from Alan. Only
one man in the world had he ever seen throw a gun into its holster like
that. A sickly grin began to spread over his own countenance, and all at
once Tatpan's eyes began to bulge.
"Stampede!" he cried.
Stampede rubbed a hand over his smooth, prominent chin and nodded
apologetically.
"It's me," he conceded. "I had to do it. It was give one or t'other
up--my whiskers _or her_. They went hard, too. I flipped dice, an' the
whiskers won. I cut cards, an' the whiskers won. I played Klondike
ag'in' 'em, an' the whiskers busted the bank. Then I got mad an' shaved
'em. Do I look so bad, Alan?"
"You look twenty years younger," declared Alan, stifling his desire to
laugh when he saw the other's seriousness.
Stampede was thoughtfully stroking his chin. "Then why the devil did
they laugh!" he demanded. "Mary Standish didn't laugh. She cried. Just
stood an' cried, an' then sat down an' cried, she thought I was that
blamed funny! And Keok laughed until she was sick an' had to go to bed.
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