In the moment that Roy hesitated there was a familiar “E yawp!” and a half dozen answering yells. The boy knew at once that Sink Weston had found old friends. Then he made out Weston’s big, black, dust-covered hat making its way toward the bar in the midst of a group of white sombreros, and he turned and left. At the door, an arm intercepted him. He drew back somewhat alarmed. It was a man who had lunged forward from the end of the bar near the door.
“Fur the love o’ God, Kid, buy me a drink.”
The mumbling speaker was a man who might have been eighty years old. Age and whisky had wrecked him. An unkempt, white beard, covered a worn, red flannel shirt. His ragged boots, into which greasy pants were stuffed, were not those of a horseman, and his gnarled, trembling fingers fell on the boy’s arm like talons. His hair, dropping from under a limp, grease-banded, ragged hat, lay on his shoulders in yellow-white, knotted locks. Almost toothless, he repeated, huskily:
Roy was shocked, and attempted to pass on. But the man, almost in collapse, held to him and dragged himself to the walk outside.
“Jist one drink’ll brace me up fur to-night. Mebbe to-morrer, I won’t need none.”
“Won’t anything else help you?” said Roy, at last. “Are you hungry?”
“Hungry?” almost moaned the broken being. “Yes, I’m hungry. But I got to hev liquor er die.”
“Why don’t you try eatin’ first?” asked the boy, not knowing what else to say. “I’ll buy you food.”
“Gimme a drink an’ I’ll eat. I ain’t et in two days.”
The boy was puzzled. His sympathetic heart was touched. Next door to the “Crater,” the usual saloon sign was surmounted by the words, “Joe’s Imperial Palace Restaurant.” In the window was a display of canned goods: sardines, asparagus, pepper sauce and bologna sausage. Grasping the old man by the shoulder, he half led and half pushed him into the eating resort. A man at the bar scowled at sight of the decrepit man, but smiled as he saw the brisk looking lad.
Three tables were lined up on one side of the room. Leading the whisky supplicant to one of these, Roy almost dropped him into a chair and then stepped over to the bar. Handing a two-dollar bill to the barkeeper, he said:
“The old man wants whisky. Looks to me as is he needs something to eat a good deal worse.”