with a hand the size, shape and color of a McClellan saddle.
“Longy,” he said, in a melancholy voice that disturbed traffic, “what have they been doing to you? You act just like a citizen. They done made you into an inmate of the city directory. You never made no such Johnny Branch execration of yourself as that out on the Gila. ‘Come and have lunching with me!’ You never defined grub by any such terms of reproach in them days.”
“I’ve been living in New York seven years,” said Merritt. “It’s been eight since we punched cows together in Old Man Garcia’s outfit. Well, let’s go to a café, anyhow. It sounds good to hear it called ‘grub’ again.”
They picked their way through the crowd to a hotel, and drifted, as by a natural law, to the bar.
“Speak up,” invited Greenbrier.
“A dry Martini,” said Merritt.
“Oh, Lord!” cried Greenbrier; “and yet me and you once saw the same pink Gila monsters crawling up the walls of the same hotel in Cañon Diablo! A dry—but let that pass. Whiskey straight—and they’re on you.”
Merritt smiled, and paid.
They lunched in a small extension of the dining room that connected with the café. Merritt dexterously diverted his friend’s choice, that hovered over ham and eggs,
