Man with No Name- Alcohol Resistance

He began to sing and three men appeared from out of the house, carrying guitars, which they began to strum. Others joined the stranger in the song, their voice raucous and off-key, slurred with drink. But they sang loud and long, far into the night, led by the Man With No Name, who constantly plied them with tequila while drinking huge quantities himself.

But it had to end, and the stranger signalled the finish when he was curtailed in the middle of an obscene lyric, went over sideways off the edge of a table, which tipped with his weight. The others tried to keep the celebration going, but the stranger had been the driving force and soon the quantity of alcohol they had taken caught up with them and one by one they staggered to their beds to sleep off the effects.

It was Chico and Esteban, as drunk as the rest but filled with goodwill, who hauled the stranger to his feet, staggered with him up the outer stairway and along the passage to the room into which he had been shown on his first entry to the Rojo household. They tipped him on to the bed and did not attempt to undress him.

“Whew, he’s heavy,” Chico said. “He weighs more than a ton.”

Esteban giggled. “Don’t we all tonight?” he asked. “With all the stuff we have poured down ourselves.”

The two men put an arm around each other’s shoulder and reeled out of the room, closing the door behind them, singing half remembered words of a dirty song the stranger had taught them. On the bed the Man With No Name lay absolutely still until the house had gone utterly quiet, and only then did he open first one eye, then the other. He sat up, swung his feet silently to the floor and shook his head to clear it of the dulling effects of the drinking. Then he got up and went to the door, and rested his ear against it. Silence greeted him. Satisfied, careful not to make any noise, he went to the window, opened it and filled his lungs with fresh air. He stepped out on to the balcony and peered down into the patio where a few oil lamps still spluttered. Two men snored in one corner, but there were no other sounds. No movement except the rise and fall of their chests.

The Man With No Name hooked a leg over the balcony wall, then the other, turned, and with his hand over the coping lowered himself full length. His feet were no more than a foot from the ground and he dropped silently, went on tiptoe to the gate and let himself out.

- A Fistful of Dollars novel, chapter 15