"Whadda yuh think you're doin', anyway?-Take 'em off!-It's Casey Ryan that's tellin' yuh, an' yuh better heed what he says, before you're tore from limb to limb!"
"B-but, Casey!-This 'ere's a shurf's possy!"-The voice of Barney rose in a protesting 'squawk.-"I brung 'em all the way over here to your rescue!-They brung a cor'ner to view your remains!-Don't you know your pardner, BARNEY OAKES?
"Ah-h--I know yuh think I don't?-I know yuh to a fare-yuh-well!
Brung a cor'ner, did yuh?-Tha's all right--goin' t' need a cor'ner-but he won't set on Casey Ryan's remains--you c'n ask anybody if any cor'ners ever set on Casey Ryan yit!-Naw." Casey snarled as contemptuously as was possible to a man in his condition. "No cor'ner ever set on Casey Ryan, an' he ain't goin' to!"
The men glanced questioningly at one another.-One laughed. He was a large, smooth-jowled man inclined to portliness, and his laugh vibrated his entire front contagiously so that the others grinned and took it for granted that Casey Ryan was a comedy element introduced unexpectedly where they had thought to find him a tragedy.
"No, you're a pretty lively man for me to sit on; I admit it," the portly man remarked.-"I'm the-coroner, and it looks as if I wouldn't sit, this trip."
Casey eyed him blearily, not in the least mollified but instead swinging to a certain degree of lucidity that was nevertheless governed largely by the hoot he had swallowed in the hootch.
"There's part of a burro 'round here some'er's you c'n set on,"
Casey informed him grimly, and fumbled in his coat pocket for his pipe.-He drew it out empty, looked at it and returned it to his pocket.-One who knew Casey intimately would have detected a hidden purpose in his manner.-The warning was faint, indefinable at best, and difficult to picture in words.-One might say that an intimate acquaintance would have detected a false note in Casey's defiance. His manner was restrained just when violence would have been more natural.
"Damn a pipe," Casey grumbled with drunken petulance.-"Anybody got a cigarette?-I'm single-handed an' I ain't able t' roll 'em."
It was the coroner himself who handed Casey a "tailor-made."
Casey nodded glumly, accepted a match and lighted the cigarette almost as if he were sober.-He looked the group over noncommittally, eyed again the handcuffs on Mart and Joe, sent a veiled glance toward Barney Oakes and turned away.-He still held the center of the stage.-Fully expecting to find him dead, the sheriff and his men were slow to adjust themselves to the fact that he was very much alive and very drunk and apparently not greatly interested in his rescue.
Casey halted in his unsteady progress toward the dugout.-The sheriff was already questioning his two prisoners about other members of the gang; but he looked up when Casey lifted up his voice and spoke his mind of the moment.
"Brung a cor'ner, did yuh, lookin' for some one to set on!
Barney Oakes is the man that'll need a cor'ner in a minute.
You're all goin' to need 'im.-Casey Ryan never stood around yit whilst his friends was hobbled up by a shurf--turn 'em loose an' turn 'em loose quick!-An' git back away from Barney Oakes so he won't drop on yuh in chunks--I'll fix 'im for yuh to set on!"
His hand had gone up to his cigarette, but only Joe knew what was likely to follow.-Joe gave a yell of warning, ducked and ran straight away from the group.-The sheriff yelled also and gave chase.-The group was broken--luckily--just as Casey heaved something in that direction.
"I blowed up a jackass yesterday when they thought I couldn't --I'll blow up a bunch of 'em to-day!-Yuh c'n set on what's left uh Barney Oakes!"
The explosion scattered dirt and small stones--and the sheriff's posse. Casey sent one malevolent glance over his shoulder as he stumbled into the dugout.
"Missed 'im!" he grumbled disgustedly to himself when he saw no fragments of Barney falling.-His ferociousness, like the dynamite, annihilated itself with the explosion.-"Missed 'im!
Casey Ryan's gittin' old; old an' sick an' a damn' fool.-Missed 'im with the last shot--drunk--drunk an' don't give a darn!"
He slammed the door shut behind him, pushed his hat forward so violently that it rested on the bridge of his nose, and wabbled over to his bunk.-This time his foot found the edge of the lower bunk, and he scratched and clawed his way up and rolled in upon the blankets.
He was asleep and snoring when the sheriff, edging his way in as if he were an animal trainer's apprentice entering the lion's cage, sneaked on his toes to the bunk and slipped the handcuffs on Casey.