Duff looked over toward the loud-mouthed man. He was sitting at a table near the cold stove, and he had long hair and a beard. He was the perfect example of the cowboy figures Duff had read about in
“Tell me now, sir, and would it be me ye are addressing?” Duff asked.
The man saw Duff looking at him. “Yeah, I’m addressin’ you. You see anyone else standin’ up there with what looks like an ugly pile of horse apples layin’ on the floor beside him?” He laughed at his own joke.
“
“What the . . .” the bearded man replied. He looked at the man sharing the table with him. Like his questioner, the man was gruff looking, but with shorter hair and no beard. “Billy Ray, you want to tell me what the hell this feller just said to me?”
“Well, Roy, it sounds to me like he wants to know what you are askin’ him.”
Roy turned back to Duff. “What I’m a’ wantin’ to know is, what the hell is that thing that’s a’ layin’ there on the floor beside you?”
“Pipes.”
“Pipes? What do you mean pipes? It don’t look like no pipe I ever have seed.”
“I suppose I should have said bagpipes.”
“A bag of pipes? So, what you are sayin’ is, you have come in here carryin’ a bag full of pipes.”
Duff turned back to the bar.
“Hey, Mister, don’t you be a’ turnin’ your back on me when we’re havin’ a conversation,” Roy said.
This time he shouted the words in anger, and that caused everyone in the saloon to stop their own conversations and to look on in curiosity at the discourse between the two men. Even the piano player stopped and the last discordant notes hung in the air.
Duff turned to face him again. “I’m sorry, but when I engage someone in conversation, I have to assume they are possessed with a modicum of intelligence, or at the very least that they are sentient. You don’t seem to enjoy either of those qualities.”
Roy’s face drew up in an expression of total confusion. He looked at Billy Ray.
“What the hell did he just say?”
“I believe he is funning you,” Billy Ray replied.
“Are you funnin’ me, boy?” Roy asked, turning back toward Duff.
“By funning, I take it you want to know if I am teasing you?”
“Yeah. You tryin’ to tease me? ’Cause I don’t take too kindly to folks that try and tease me.”
“Then, Roy, ye may put your mind at ease. I don’t tease people that I don’t like. And though I have just met you, you have made reproachful comments about my pipes. I have heard the call of the pipes when engaged in deadly combat, so I dinnae take kindly to those who pass disparaging remarks about something that is so dear to my heart. So, for that reason, if for no other, I don’t like you.”
“You’re a foreigner, ain’t ya?” Roy asked.
“Aye. I am Scot.”
“I didn’t ask you your name. I asked you iffen you was a foreigner.”
“When I say I am Scot, I’m not telling you my name. I’m telling you my nationality. I am from Scotland. You do seem to have some difficulty in speaking English, don’t you?”
“I know’d you wasn’t American,” Roy said. “What are you doin’ here? You’re a long way from home, ain’t you?”
“On the contrary, I am quite close to home. I’ve just arranged for a parcel of land near here,” Duff said. “So, Roy, it looks as if you and I are going to be neighbors. And because of the inauspicious meeting, I do not think we could ever be friends, but I think we should at least make an effort to get on with each other.”
“You think that, do you? Well, you know what I think? I think you should go back to Scotland.”
“I’ve no plans to go back to Scotland.”
“You ain’t goin’ to like it here,” Roy said. “You’re goin’ to find a lot more people like me, who don’t cotton to strangers. Especially strangers who come from some foreign country.”
“I appreciate your concern, Roy, I really do, but I fully intend to stay here,” Duff said. He took another swallow of his beer, but he didn’t take his eyes off Roy.
“I see you’re wearin’ a gun. Are you very fast with it?” Roy asked.
“I cannot answer that question with certainty, as I have never had to make a rapid extraction of my pistol. So if you are asking if I would be very proficient in that particular act, I think I would have to say that, in all probability, I am not.”
“Mister, I don’t even know what the hell you are talking about,” Roy said. “Why don’t you talk in plain English?”
“He says he ain’t very good,” Billy Ray said.
“Ain’t very good, huh?” A humorless smile spread across Roy’s lips. Roy stood up, stepped away from the table, and let his arms hang loosely by his sides. That was when Duff saw that Roy was not only wearing a pistol, he was wearing it low, as Falcon had instructed him to do.
