“Tickled to death to meet up with you, Mr. Royal-Cherokee-Beaudry-Street.  How is every little thing a-coming?  Fine as silk, eh?  You’d ought to be laying by quite a bit of the mazuma, what with rewards and spy money together,” taunted Charlton.

To the center of the circle Meldrum elbowed his drunken way.  “Lemme get at the pink-ear.  Lemme bust him one,” he demanded.

Ned Rutherford held him back.  “Don’t break yore breeching, Dan.  Brad has done spoke for him,” the young man drawled.

Into the white face of his victim Charlton puffed the smoke of his cigar.  “If you ain’t too busy going fishing maybe you could sell me a windmill to-day.  How about that, Mr. Cornell-I-Yell?”

“Where’s yore dry nurse Dingwell?” broke in the ex-convict bitterly.  “Thought he tagged you everywhere.  Tell the son-of-a-gun for me that next time we meet I’ll curl his hair right.”

Roy said nothing.  He looked wildly around for a way of escape and found none.  A half ring of jeering faces walled him from the street.

“Lemme get at him.  Lemme crack him one on the bean,” insisted Meldrum as he made a wild pass at Beaudry.

“No hurry a-tall,” soothed Ned.  “We got all evening before us.  Take yore time, Dan.”

“Looks to me like it’s certainly up to Mr. Cherokee-What’s-his-name-Beaudry to treat the crowd,” suggested Chet Fox.

The young man clutched at the straw.  “Sure.  Of course, I will.  Glad to treat, even though I don’t drink myself,” he said with a weak, forced heartiness.

“You don’t drink.  The hell you don’t!” cut in Meldrum above the Babel of voices.

“He drinks—­hic—­buttermilk,” contributed Hart.

“He’ll drink whiskey when I give the word, by Gad!” Meldrum shook himself free of Rutherford and pressed forward.  He dragged a bottle from his pocket, drew out the cork, and thrust the liquor at Roy.  “Drink, you yellow-streaked coyote—­and drink a-plenty.”

Roy shook his head.  “No!—­no,” he protested.  “I—­I—­never touch it.”  His lips were ashen.  The color had fled from his cheeks.

The desperado pushed his cruel, vice-scarred face close to that of the man he hated.

“Sa-ay.  Listen to me, young fellow.  I’m going to bump you off one o’ these days sure.  Me, I don’t like yore name nor the color of yore hair nor the map you wear for a face.  I’m a killer.  Me, Dan Meldrum.  And I serve notice on you right now.”  With an effort he brought his mind back to the issue on hand.  “But that ain’t the point.  When I ask a man to drink he drinks.  See?  You ain’t deef, are you?  Then drink, you rabbit!”

Beaudry, his heart beating like a triphammer, told himself that he was not going to drink that they could not make him—­that he would die first.  But before he knew it the flask was in his trembling fingers.  Apparently, without the consent of his flaccid will, the muscles had responded to the impulse of obedience to the spur of fear.  Even while his brain drummed the refrain, “I won’t drink—­I won’t—­I won’t,” the bottle was rising to his lips.