"He's already had one steak," Maxwell pointed out. "How much can he eat?"
"An unlimited amount," said Oop. "In the old days one of them monsters would polish off an elk in a single sitting. Did I ever tell you-"
"I am sure you have," said Ghost.
"But that was a cooked steak," protested Carol, "and he likes them raw. Besides, it was a small one."
"Oop," said Maxwell, "get that waiter back here. You are good at it. You have the voice for it."
Oop signaled with a brawny arm and bellowed. He waited for a moment, then bellowed once again, without results.
"He won't pay attention to me," Oop growled. "Maybe it's not our waiter. I never am able to tell them monkeys apart. They all look alike to me."
"I don't like the crowd tonight," said Ghost. "I have been watching it. There's trouble in the air."
"What is wrong with it?" asked Maxwell.
"There are an awful lot of creeps from English Lit. This is not their hangout. Mostly the crowd here are Time and Supernatural."
"You mean this Shakespeare business?"
"That might be it," said Ghost.
Maxwell handed Carol her drink, pushed another across the table to Oop.
"It seems a shame," Carol said to Ghost, "not to give you one. Couldn't you even sniff it, just a little?" "Don't let it bother you," said Oop. "The guy gets drunk on moonbeams. He can dance on rainbows. He has a lot of advantages you and I don't have. For one thing, he's immortal. What could kill a ghost?"
"I'm not sure of that," said Ghost.
"There's one thing that bothers me," said Carol. "You don't mind, do you?"
"Not at all," said Ghost.
"It's this business of your not knowing who you are the ghost of. Is that true or is it just a joke?"
"It is true," said Ghost. "And I don't mind telling you, it's embarrassing and confusing. But I've just plain forgotten. From England-that much, at least, I know. But the name I can't recall. I would suspect most other ghosts-"
"We have no other ghosts," said Maxwell. "Contacts with other ghosts, of course, and conversations and interviews with them. But no other ghost has ever come to live with us. Why did you do it, Ghost-come to live with us."
"He's a natural chiseler," said Oop. "Always figuring out the angles."
"You're wrong there," Maxwell said. "It's damned little we can do for Ghost."
"You give me," said Ghost, "a sense of reality."
"Well, no matter what the reason," said Maxwell, "I am glad you did it."
"The three of you," said Carol, "have been friends for a long, long time."
"And it seems strange to you?" asked Oop.
"Well, yes, maybe it does," she said. "I don't know really what I mean."
Sounds of scuffling came from the front of the place. Carol and Maxwell turned around in their chairs to look in the direction from which the scuf8ing came, but there wasn't much that one could see.
A man suddenly loomed on top of the table and began to sing:
Hurrah for Old Bill Shakespeare;
He never wrote them plays;
He stayed at home, and chasing girls,
Sang dirty rondelays...
Jeers and catcalls broke out from over the room and someone threw something that went sailing past the singer. Part of the crowd took up the song:
Hurrah for Old Bill Shakespeare;
He never wrote them...
Someone with a bull voice howled: "To hell with Old Bill Shakespeare!"
The room exploded into action. Chairs went over. There were other people on top of tables. Shouts reverberated and there was shoving and pushing. Fists began to fly. Various items went sailing through the air.
Maxwell sprang to his feet, reached out an arm and swept it back, shoving Carol behind him. Oop came charging across the tabletop with a wild war whoop. His foot caught the bucket and sent the ice cubes flying.
"I'll mow 'em down," he yelled at Maxwell. "You pile 'em to one side!"
Maxwell saw a fist coming at him out of nowhere and ducked to one side, bringing his own fist up in a vicious jab, hitting out at nothing, but aiming in the direction from which the fist had come. Over his shoulder came Oop's brawny arm, with a massive fist attached. It smacked into a face with a splattering sound and out beyond the table a figure went slumping to the floor.
Something heavy and traveling fast caught Maxwell behind the ear and he went down. Feet surged all around him. Someone stepped on his hand. Someone fell on top of him. Above him, seemingly from a long ways off, he heard Oop's wild whooping.
Twisting around, he shoved off the body that had fallen across him and staggered to his feet.
A hand grabbed him by the elbow and twisted him around.
"Let's get out of here," said Oop. "Someone will get hurt."
Carol was backed against the table, bent over, with her hands clutching the scruff of Sylvester's neck. Sylvester was standing on his hind legs and pawing the air with his forelegs. Snarls were rumbling in his throat and his long fangs gleamed.
"If we don't get him out of here," said Oop, "that cat will get his steak."
He swooped down and wrapped an arm around the cat, lifting him by the middle; hugging him tight against his chest.
"Take care of the girl," Oop told Maxwell. "There's a back door around here somewhere. And don't leave that bottle behind. We'll need it later on."
Maxwell reached out and grabbed the bottle.
There was no sign of Ghost.
Chapter 6
"I'm a coward," Ghost confessed. "I admit that I turn chicken at the sight of violence."
"And you," said Oop, "the one guy in the world no one can lay a mitt on."
They sat at the rude, square, rickety table that Oop once, in a moment of housekeeping energy, had knocked together from rough boards. Carol pushed away her plate. "I was starved," she said, "but not any more."
"You're not the only one," said Oop. "Look at our putty cat."
Sylvester was curled up in front of the fireplace, his bobbed tail clamped down tight against his rump, his furry paws covering his nose. His whiskers stirred gently as his breath went in and out.
"That's the first time in my life," said Oop, "I ever saw a saber-toother have more than he could eat."
He reached out for the bottle and shook it. It had an empty sound. He lumbered to his feet and went across the floor, knelt and raised a small door set into the floor, reaching down with his arm and searching in the space underneath the door. He brought up a glass fruit jar and set it to one side. He brought up a second fruit jar and set it beside the first. Finally he came up triumphantly with a bottle.
He put the fruit jars back and closed the door. Back at the table, he snapped the sealer off the bottle and reached out to pour drinks.
"You guys don't want ice," he said. "It just dilutes the booze. Besides, I haven't any."
He jerked a thumb back toward the door hidden in the floor. "My cache," he said. "I keep a jug or two hid out.
Some day I might break a leg or something and the doc would say I couldn't drink..."
"Not with a broken leg," said Ghost. "No one would object to your drinking with a broken leg."
"Well, then, something else," said Oop.
They sat contentedly with their drinks, Ghost staring at the fire. Outside a rising wind worried at the shack.
"I've never had a better meal," said Carol. "First time I ever cooked my own steak stuck on a stick above an open fire."
Oop belched contentedly. "That's the way we did it back in the Old Stone Age. That, or eat it raw, like the saber-toother. We didn't have no stoves or ovens or fancy things like that."