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THE MAN UNDER THE CLOAK
Dave Drennen was a big man, no man here so big save Kootanie George alone, who was two inches the taller and fully thirty pounds the heavier. The Canadian stood four inches better than six feet in his squat, low-heeled boots and must turn sideways to get his massive shoulders through most doors hereabouts. Unlike most very tall men George carried himself straight, his enormous chest thrust forward.
Drennen was younger by half a dozen years, slenderer, of cleaner build. Any man at Père Marquette's would have emptied his pockets that night to witness a fight between the two. Men as a rule liked Kootanie George, slow moving, slow spoken, heavily good humoured. And as an even more unbroken rule they disliked Dave Drennen. Throughout the far places of the great northwest into which of recent years he had fitted restlessly he was known as a man at once too silent and too quarrelsome. He trod his own trail alone. Other men had "pardners"; Drennen was no man's friend. He was hard and he was bitter. Not yet at the end of his first score and ten, his mouth had grown set in stern, harsh lines, his heavy brows had acquired the habit of bunching ominously over eyes in which was the glint of steel. He was a man whose smile was unpleasant, whose laugh could be as ugly as many a man's curse.
It looked like a quarrel between No-luck Drennen and Blunt Rand. And yet the men who ceased their playing at the snap of his voice forgot Rand and hungered for trouble between Drennen and Kootanie George. Rand had been measured long ago and didn't count. He blabbed big words when he was drunk and whined when a man struck him. He would swallow his words now and swallow with them No-luck Drennen's vicious "You're a liar, Blunt Rand." Even if Drennen slapped his face he would merely crawl away like a little bug, spitting venom.
Drennen was standing ten feet from him and made no move to draw closer.
"Did you hear me, Rand?" he demanded sharply.
"I heard you," grumbled the trapper. "What's eatin' you, Dave, anyway?"
"Tell them you lied."
Rand flushed, and inspired by his liquor a sudden, unusual stubbornness sprang up in his eyes. He heard Ernestine laugh softly.
"You go to hell," he cried hotly. "I got a right … "
"No man has a right to lie about me," announced Drennen crisply. The big hands at his sides had clenched swiftly with knotting muscles. At last he took a quick step forward, his quarrelsome mood riding him. "If you don't want me to choke the tongue out of your head tell them you lied."
"Messieurs, messieurs," cried poor old Marquette imploringly. "For the love of God! Tonight all mus' be gay, all mus' be frien's. It is the night Mamma Jeanne an' me we are marry fifty year … "
Drennen snarled at him, shaking the thin old hand away angrily. Rand was upon his feet, some of the stubbornness already fled from his eyes, the sound of Ernestine Dumont's taunting laugh lost to him in the harsh voice of Drennen.
"I don't want no trouble to-night, Dave," he said swiftly. "It's old Papa Marquette's weddin' night. I … I was jus' joshin', Dave." And then as Ernestine laughed again, he spat out, "Jus' joshin' to tease Ernestine here."
"Sangre de dios!" murmured Ramon Garcia gently, his black eyes liquid fire. "He is a little coward, that Rand."
Hardly more than a whisper and Garcia quite across the room from Rand. And yet the stillness was so perfect that Rand heard and jerked his head up, swinging toward the Mexican.
"You little Greaser!" he cried shrilly. "You dirty breed, you!" He pushed through the crowd to Garcia's table. "Coward, am I? I'll show you."
Ramon Garcia's laughter greeting the hot words was a clear burst of unaffected, boyish merriment. He tilted his chair back against the wall and turned a delighted face up to Rand's flushed one.
"Señor," he chided softly, shaking a slender white finger very close to Rand's nose, "have you forgot it is the gala night of our good host, the Papa Français? That you don't care for trouble to-night? Mama mia! You are a comic—no?"
Then bringing his hand away and hooking both thumbs impudently into the armholes of his gay vest the Mexican smiled as he hummed softly, glancing away briefly to where Ernestine Dumont was watching them:
"The perfume of roses, of little red roses;
(Thou art a rose, oh, so sweet, corazón!)"
With men laughing at him Blunt Rand struck. The young Mexican was still in his chair. Like a cat he slipped from it now, avoiding the heavy, swinging blow, moving to one side with swift gracefulness, standing with the table between him and Rand. As he moved his right hand slid into his pocket.
"You dago!" Rand shouted at him, lunging forward while men scrambled out of the way. "Call me coward an' then go for your knife! Fight with your hands, damn you."
Again Garcia avoided him easily, calm and quick eyed, offering pantherine swiftness against the blind fury of Rand.
"Si, señor," he answered lightly. "With the hands. But the hands I mus' keep without dirt, señor!"
His hand came away from his pocket and he made a sudden gesture, still laughing, toward Rand's face. The trapper jerked back quickly. Then a great booming swell of laughter went up, even the slow rumble of Kootanie George's voice and the tinkling tremulo of Ernestine Dumont's joining it Ramon Garcia had brought out his gloves and had drawn them on before Rand had understood.
In size and physique Rand was the average there. The young Mexican was the shortest, slightest man in the house. But none knows better than the dwellers in the North Woods that it is unwise to judge men by mere size of body. It is well to look to the eyes of one's antagonist.
Garcia sprang forward and slapped Rand's face so that the face burned and the sound of the blow was like a pistol shot in the quiet room. And as Rand's return threshing blow sought him he sprang away, laughing.
"For calling me Greaser," he cried lightly. "When I have said out loud that I am Ramon Garcia."
Bellowing curses Rand charged at him again. Garcia avoided and seemed to have no difficulty whatever in so doing.
"Will you open the door, señor?" he called to a man standing near the entrance.
"He wants to have an open trail to run," jeered Rand. And again striking heavily his blow found the empty air and a second resounding slap reddened his other cheek.
"For calling me a breed," taunted Garcia, so that all might hear the words with the slap of the open hand. "Me who have the blood of kings, blue like the skies."
The man standing at the door … it chanced to be young Frank Marquette … obeyed Garcia's command silently and promptly. Rand, his rage flaring ever higher as men drawing chairs and tables out of the way laughed at him and as the Mexican's sallies taunted him, hurled himself forward purposing to get his enemy in a corner of the room. But at the best the trapper was awkward and Ramon Garcia's little feet in his little boots carried him much as the fabled winged sandals bore the hero Perseus in his encounter with the dragon. Not once had Rand landed a square blow; not once
