Page:GB Lancaster--law-bringer.djvu/34

32 a few men slept in the smell of tobacco-smoke and bilge-water, and a breed with huge rounded shoulders was shouting up the bank to a white boy.

"Slicker! Are Ducane come in yet?"

The white boy looked down with eyes that were startlingly blue in the sunburnt face, and finished his whistle through to the end. Then he said:

"Were you speaking to me?" The breed's heavy face went purple. In law he classed as a white man, and he had white relations.

"What d'yer think?" he said savagely.

"I thought you were," explained Slicker blandly. "But I guess you've got my name wrong. It's Warriner—H. G. Warriner."

He turned and strolled off, and the breed came up the bank with red flecking his little eyes. Slicker heard him cross the street and shout through the mob of men round the bar-door:

"Ducane! Any feller seed Ducane?"

"Slicker!"

The boy's whistle broke sharply. Then his brown face lit up.

"Hillo, Tempest," he said. "These fellows will be going some soon."

"Why, certainly. They've been dry for six months, and they've got to get rid of their pay before they pull out again. Seen Ducane?"

Slicker's cousin happened to be married to Ducane. But this was no matter of pride to Slicker.

"Why should all the world reckon I carry Ducane around in my pocket?" he demanded. "I'm sick of the name of the brute. Robinson was asking for him just now."

"Slicker!"

"Now, what in the nation" Slicker wheeled and looked into the eyes of Ducane's young wife. "You're the third man to-day who has asked me where Ducane is," he said. "And I don't know. I don't know. I don't"

"But I never asked you."

"But you were just going to. You can't monkey with me, Jennifer."