Fire Brands

“I’ll kill him, if it’s the last thing I ever do!” yelped “Sad” Sontag. “I tell yuh, I’m goin’ to kill him!”

“Quit it, I tell yuh!” wailed the bartender. “Don’t do that!”

Swish! Crash!

“Aw-w-w-w, you danged fool!” The bartender’s voice was raised in a wailing crescendo. “Look what yuh went and done.”

Sad Sontag’s face came up from behind the bar and he looked around solemnly. His serious gray eyes considered the redfaced bartender, shifted to “Swede” Harrigan, his partner, and then considered other occupants of the saloon, who were interested.

“Your darned heels knocked some of my glasses down,” complained the bartender. “I told yuh not to do it, didn’t I? Didn’t I tell yuh not to git up on my bar like that?”

“Uh-huh,” nodded Sad. “I s’pose yuh did mention it.”

“Mention, hell!” The bartender appealed to the crowd. “I’ll leave to any of you.”

“You kinda overreached yourself, cowboy,” observed Swede.

“Uh-huh,” Sad squinted around, felt the back of his neck and shrugged his thin shoulders.

“Well, I s’pose I missed him,” he said ruefully, coming from behind the bar. “That’s the first darned horsefly that ever bit me from behind and got away with it.”

“Gittin’ up on my bar and tryin’ to hit a fly with a hat!” The bartender was justly indignant. “Where in hell do you fellers think this place is, anyway? Balancin’ on your knees on top of my bar and——”

“Wait a minute,” interrupted Sad. “If you think that anybody is intensely interested in yore recital, hire a hall. I’ll betcha you’ve got a silv’ry voice, and all that, but not when yo’re mad. Right now yuh kinda creak yore words.”

“I’ve got a right to kick, ain’t I?”

Sad leaned against the bar, his old sombrero pulled down over his left eye, his shirt collar hiked up around his ears, and squinted reflectively at the irate bartender.

“All right,” he nodded. “Go ahead. But, brother, let not yore oration become personal. Use all the ‘I’s’ yuh want to, but keep from sayin’ ‘you’ as much as possible. Proceed.”

But the bartender’s vocabulary seemed to have oozed away; so he contented himself with picking up what few glasses Sad’s heels had smashed when he fell off the bar in his efforts to swat a horsefly.

Sad Sontag was as lean as a grayhound, bronzed as an Indian. His hair was sort of a washed-out sandy color, with one long lock extending down his forehead and joining one of his arched eyebrows, which gave him an habitual astonished expression.

Sad’s shirt was of neutral shade; the color having long since faded from the sun and strong soap, his chaps worn and scarred, and his boot heels badly run over on the outer edges, which proved that Sad was bow-legged.

His cartridge belt was of extra width, molded by use to fit the curve of his hip and thigh, and from a scarred holster protruded the plain, black wood butt of a heavy Colt revolver.

Swede Harrigan, his partner, was a composite of Gaelic and Norse; a six foot six inch blond cowboy, with an Irish mouth and nose. His eyes were round and very blue; patient-looking eyes, which belied the nose and mouth below them. His raiment was on a par with that worn by Sad, except that his boot heels were slightly run over on the inner side, which proved that Swede was a little knock-kneed in spite of the fact that he had spent most of his life in a saddle.

They were a nondescript pair, these two cowpunchers; neither handsome nor gaudy. An experienced cattleman would probably pick them out of a crowd as being tophand cowboys; but as far as appearances went they were merely two ordinary cowhands, no better nor worse than the average run.

Nor were they, except that they were joint owners of the TJ cattle outfit in the Sundown country, a hundred miles north of this town of Oreana. Oreana City, they called it, a cow town of a hundred and fifty inhabitants, and the county seat of Pipestone County.

The bartender cooled down considerably when he found that the damage was small, and offered to set up the drinks.

“Gimme a see-gar,” said Sad seriously.

“I’ll burn m’ tongue, too,” nodded Swede.

The bartender dug beneath the bar top and drew out a cigar box, which he dusted off and opened.

“Them,” he said, tipping the box for a better view, “them is what I call cigars. They costs me three dollars per hundred. Ain’t much call for cigars here.”

“Hadn’t ort to be,” agreed Swede. “Prob’ly be less after this.”

“It don’t do no good to wet ’em that-away,” declared the bartender. “I’ve done it a lot of times, but they won’t stick.”

Sad’s cigar slipped from his fingers onto the floor, while Swede stumbled and broke his against the bar.

“I’ll buy a drink of liquor,” declared Sad, and added meaningly, “I hope yuh didn’t try to make that stick.”

“Aw-w-w-w, I didn’t mean them cigars,” protested the bartender. “I meant that I’d tried it with the ones I smoked.”

“Yuh shore get lucid too late,” said Swede sadly. “I never did see a bartender that wasn’t about forty minutes late.”

“Yeah? Well, I wasn’t always a bartender.”

“Yore work shows it,” grinned Sad. “Well, here’s how.”

Swede grimaced and coughed.

“My gosh!” he gasped. “That’s the first time I ever made a test-tube out of my insides. Hooh! I’ll betcha that inside of fifteen minutes there won’t be nothin’ left of me except my ring and the case of my watch. Nitric acid!”

“Twenty years in the wood,” declared the bartender.

“Ah-h-h-h-h!” Sad clung to the bar, gasping like a drowning man, his eyes closed painfully. The bartender had not yet taken his drink, and now he slid it beneath the bar and dumped it into the slacktub, where he washed his glasses.

He sniffed at the bottles. It seemed to smell all right.

“It seems to be all right,” he said.

“Yeah, it’s all right, but it’s got kind of a whisky taste,” said Sad.

“My gosh, it is whisky!”

“It is?” Sad’s eyebrows lifted incredulously. “Do you mean to tell me—ah, no, it cannot be!”

“He says it straight enough,” said Swede seriously. He and Sad stared at each other wonderingly, turned together, stared at the bartender and went slowly out into the street; while the bartender rubbed his chin and wondered what on earth it was all about anyway.

Sad and Swede walked up the narrow sidewalk, their faces very solemn until they looked at each other and burst into laughter.

“Now that poor bartender’ll wonder whether we’re crazy or he is,” chuckled Sad. “Didja see him ditch his drink, Swede?”

“Did I? Ha, ha, ha, ha! It’s got a whisky taste!” Swede went into paroxisms of unholy glee.

They stopped near the entrance of a hall which led up to the county offices, and began perusing the assorted notices tacked to the wall. Sad seemed interested in one particular notice which concerned a sheriff’s sale.