“Ain’t he a mess?” he observed.  “Ain’t he a mess?  I expect he’ll be right down peevish about it when he comes to.”

“Think so?” Honey Hoke was not quite sure of the point of Doc’s remark.

“Yeah, I think so.  I’m shore he will when I tell him how he was kicked.”

“Kicked?”

“Shore kicked.  Kicked after he was down.”

“How?”

“Didn’t you see that feller Dawson kick Bull when he was down?  Where was yore eyes?”

“That’s the way of it, huh?  Well, it might save trouble if Bull was to go on the prod real vicious.”

“Yo’re whistlin’.  They ain’t no manner of reason for doin’ a job yoreself if you can get somebody else to do it for you.”

When Bull came to he was lying on his cot in his little cubby hole adjoining the back room of the Starlight.  Over across from the bed Doc Coffin was looking out of the grimy window.  Behind the closed door giving egress to the back room certain folk were busy at faro.  “King win, ten lose,” the dealer was saying.

Doc Coffin turned at the rustle of Bull’s slight movement.  Doc nodded grimly.

“How’s the head?” he inquired.

Bull put up a hand to the bandage encircling his bullet head and swore feelingly.

“Guess it does hurt some,” was Doc’s comment.  “Doc Alton took three stitches.  Lucky you was still senseless.  He had to use a harness-needle.”

Bull heartily damned Doc Alton, his methods, the faro players in the next room, himself, and wound up with a blistering curse directed against mankind in general and Racey Dawson in particular.

“Tha’s right, Bull,” Doc Coffin applauded dryly.  “Cuss him out.  Give him hell.  Must do you a lot of good.”

Bull was understood to consign Doc Coffin to the region of lost souls.

“I’d go a leetle slow,” advised Doc Coffin, gently.  “Just a leetle slow if I was you.  Yo’re on yore back now, but you’ll be getting all right in a li’l while, and it’s just possible, Bull, I might take it into my head to ask you what you meant by all them cuss words yo’re throwin’ at me.”

There was an icy glint in the pale blue eyes of Doc Coffin.  Bull shut up and subsided.

“What,” queried Doc Coffin after a momentary silence, “was the matter with you?”

“With me?”

“Shore, with you.  Who’m I talking to?  What was the matter with you, anyway?  Don’t you know any better’n to go up against a jigger like that Dawson man?  Yo’re too cripplin’ slow with a gun, feller.”

“Well, I—­”

“Y’oughta had him twice while he was swinging that bottle....  Yeah, twice, I’m tellin’ you.  You had time enough.  But not you.  You just stood there like a bump on a log and let him hit you.  Yo’re a fine-lookin’ example of a two-legged man, you are.  If you ain’t careful, Bull, some two-year-old infant is gonna come along and spit in yore eye.”

“He was so damn quick,” alibied Bull.  “I wasn’t expectin’ it.”