The Padre gave a well-assumed start and emitted a low whistle. Then he turned directly toward the counter.
"You best have a drink on me--for the good of the house," he said. "I'll take rye."
Beasley swung himself across the counter with a laugh.
"Say, that beats the devil!" he cried. "I'll sure drink with you. No one sooner."
The Padre nodded.
"Splendid," he smiled. Then as the other passed glasses and the bottle, he went on: "Tell us about it--the racket, I mean."
Beasley helped himself to a drink and laughed harshly.
"Wal, I didn't get it right," he said, raising his glass. "Here's 'how'!" He gulped down his drink and set the empty glass on the counter. "Y' see, I was handin' out drinks when the racket started. They were all muckin' around with them four sluts that come in town the other day. Guess they was all most sloshed to the gills. First thing I know they were quarreling, then some un got busy with a gun. Then they started chasin' Curly, an' I see the Kid lying around shot up. It was jest a flesh wound, an' I had him boosted out to his own shack. His partner, Pete--they struck a partnership, those two--why, I guess he's seein' to him. 'Tain't on'y a scratch."
The Padre set his glass down. He had not drunk his liquor at a gulp like the other.
"Pity," he said, his eyes turned again to the blood-stained floor. "I s'pose it was the women--I mean the cause?"
The man's manner was so disarming that Beasley felt quite safe in "opening out."
"Pity?" he laughed brutally. "Wher's the pity? Course it was the women. It's always the women. Set men around a bunch of women and ther's always trouble. It's always been, and it always will be. Ther's no pity about it I can see. We're all made that way, and those who set us on this rotten earth meant it so, or it wouldn't be."
The Padre's gray eyes surveyed the narrow face before him. This man, with his virulent meanness, his iron-gray hair, his chequered past, always interested him.
"And do you think this sort of trouble would occur if--if the men hadn't been drunk?" he asked pointedly.
Beasley's antagonism surged, but his outward seeming was perfectly amiable.
"Meaning me?" he asked, with a grin.
The Padre shrugged.
"I was thinking that these things have been occurring ever since the camp was flooded with----"
"Rye!" Beasley's eyes sparkled. He reached the Padre's now empty glass and gave him a fresh one, pushing the bottle toward him. "You'll hev a drink on me, an' if you've got time, I'll tell you about this thing."