Lonesome Land Read Free Page A

sick, or—”
    “I’ll take you over to the hotel, and go tell him you’re here,” he volunteered, somewhat curtly, and picked up her bag.
    “Oh, thank you.” This time her eyes grazed his face inattentively. She followed him down the rough steps of planking and up an extremely dusty road—one could scarcely call it a
street—to an uninviting building with crooked windows and a high, false front of unpainted boards.
    The young fellow opened a sagging door, let her pass into a narrow hallway, and from there into a stuffy, hopelessly conventional fifth-rate parlor, handed her the bag, and departed with another
tilt of the hat which placed it at a different angle. The sentence meant for farewell she did not catch, for she was staring at a wooden-faced portrait upon an easel, the portrait of a man with a
drooping mustache, and porky cheeks, and dead-looking eyes.
    “And I expected bearskin rugs, and antlers on the walls, and big fireplaces!” she remarked aloud, and sighed. Then she turned and pulled aside a coarse curtain of dusty, machine-made
lace, and looked after her guide. He was just disappearing into a saloon across the street, and she dropped the curtain precipitately, as if she were ashamed of spying. “Oh,
well—I’ve heard all cowboys are more or less intemperate,” she excused, again aloud. She sat down upon an atrocious red plush chair, and wrinkled her nose spitefully at the
porky-cheeked portrait. “I suppose you’re the proprietor,” she accused, “or else the proprietor’s son. I wish you wouldn’t squint like that. If I have to stop
here longer than ten minutes, I shall certainly turn you face to the wall.” Whereupon, with another grimace, she turned her back upon it and looked out of the window. Then she stood up
impatiently, looked at her watch, and sat down again upon the red plush chair.
    “He didn’t tell me whether Manley is sick,” she said suddenly, with some resentment. “He was awfully abrupt in his manner. Oh, you—” She rose, picked up an
old newspaper from the marble-topped table with uncertain legs, and spread it ungently over the portrait upon the easel. Then she went to the window and looked out again. “I feel perfectly
sure that cowboy went and got drunk immediately,” she complained, drumming pettishly upon the glass. “And I don’t suppose he told Manley at all.”
    The cowboy was innocent of the charge, however, and he was doing his energetic best to tell Manley. He had gone straight through the saloon and into the small room behind, where a man lay
sprawled upon a bed in one corner. He was asleep, and his clothes were wrinkled as if he had lain there long. His head rested upon his folded arms, and he was snoring loudly. The young fellow went
up and took him roughly by the shoulder.
    “Here! I thought I told you to straighten up,” he cried disgustedly. “Come alive! The train’s come and gone, and your girl’s waiting for you over to the hotel.
D’ you hear?”
    “Uh-huh!” The man opened one eye, grunted, and closed it again.
    The other yanked him half off the bed, and swore. This brought both eyes open, glassy with whisky and sleep. He sat wobbling upon the edge of the bed, staring stupidly.
    “Can’t you get anything through you?” his tormentor exclaimed. “You want your girl to find out you’re drunk? You got the license in your pocket. You’re
supposed to get spliced this evening—and look at you!” He turned and went out to the bartender.
    “Why didn’t you pour that coffee into him, like I told you?” he demanded. “We’ve got to get him steady on his pins somehow! ”
    The bartender was sprawled half over the bar, apathetically reading the sporting news of a torn Sunday edition of an Eastern paper. He looked up from under his eyebrows and grunted.
    “How you going to pour coffee down a man that lays flat on his belly and won’t open his mouth?” he inquired, in an injured tone. “Sleep’s all he needs,