The Come-On/Chapter 2
II.
THE brakeman announced Galena City in a weird language of his own, and immediately thereafter the air set friction to the flying heels of Number 97, west-bound. As she slackened way Mr. J. Addison Mortimer arose and followed an obsequious porter bearing his grip.
"Which is the best hotel here?" he asked the ebony one as they stood together in the vestibule. The porter scratched his tight-wooled poll apologetically.
"Ah dunno, suh," he said, doubtfully. "Dey's diff'unt f'om hotels back East. An Ah'se new on de run."
For which shortcoming he received but a measly two bits instead of the expected half-dollar, and in consequence dumped the grip with slight ceremony on the station-platform, leaving its owner to shift for himself.
As Mortimer stood uncertainly on the platform in the falling rain, jostled by muddy and unkempt men. he presented much the air of a sleek, pert young spaniel suddenly shot into a company of lean, sinewy sled-dogs. He was carefully dressed with an effect of studied negligée eminently proper for a mining-town. His clothes of rough tweed fitted him well: his head was covered by an expensive pearl-gray soft felt hat, and his shoes were tan, heavily soled and quite unsoiled; as a great concession to the free-and-easy spirit of the West his collar was a full half-inch lower than usual. But his air of cock-sureness was quite intact.
He picked up his grip and walked up the station-platform. A lanky individual stood watching the receding train. A stained and worn pony hat was tilted over his eyes, his trousers were tucked into mini-spattered boots, and he sucked on a ragged cigar. To him Mortimer turned tor information.
"Excuse me!" he began politely.
The lanky man slowly withdrew his eyes from the vanishing coaches and surveyed his interlocutor. The eyes were a cold blue, expressionless and calm.
"Sure," he replied. "But don't do it again."
Mortimer was uncertain whether he had offended unconsciously or whether the other was making fun of him. "Can you direct me to a good hotel?" he said with dignity.
This simple request seemed to surprise the lanky man.
"You wouldn't want a quiet boardin'-house with the advantages an' refinements of a Christian home, would you?" he asked.
"I said a hotel," said Mortimer, with added dignity.
"A high-grade, modern, first-class house, caterin' to the best trade?" suggested the other.
"Yes," replied Mortimer.
"Young feller," said the stranger solemnly, "this here is Galena City—not heaven nor Bosting, nor yet Noo York nor Chi. If you're of a contented disposition, so's you can thank God for a chance to shake dice for a third share in a one-man bed and three squares of air-tights a day, go to the Palace; if you're partic'lar, build a hotel for yourself."
Mortimer went to the Palace, where his modest demand for a room and bath was met by a counter-proposition of a billiard-table and sufficient whisky to insure sound slumber thereon or thereunder. The house was crowded, but he finally secured a room in common with a stranger, and thought himself in luck to do so.
For some days he looked about him seeking an opportunity for investment. Investments there were in plenty; not a man but was ready to put a figure on anything he owned or might acquire. But the figures were invariably high and Mortimer was looking for a gilt-edged proposition—one that would yield him one hundred per cent. profit and show it on its face. Modest gambles on quarter interests in unproved claims he passed up as too risky and too slow.
His first unfavorable impressions of Galena City were confirmed. The town was raw and hopelessly vulgar, as well as exceedingly dirty. It rained without intermission—a slow, soaking drizzle of needlelike streams that turned the yellow and red clays to clinging paste which gripped boots with a despairing clutch.
On the principle that so much water without needed a corrective within, the entire white population of Galena, male and female after their kind, imbibed freely of more or less undiluted alcohol. The only workers appeared to be Swedes and Chinamen, lowly amphibians unaffected by the prevailing damp.
Naturally disputes, liquor-born and otherwise, took place. One gun-fight of which Mortimer chanced to be a witness occurred in a combined saloon and gambling-house. Until he dies peacefully in an Ardendale immaculate bed with nurses, physicians, and offspring unto the second generation in attendance Mortimer will remember it—the sudden hush of voices; the cold, deliberate, whip-lash word flung across the silence; following it vengefully the staccato bang of the guns, the upward leap of their muzzles, the wild stampede of the onlookers for safety. And then the coughing man who dropped to his knees beneath the pistol-spread haze, dying as he fell. Five minutes after every game was going full-blast.
All this was different from Ardendale, from college, from the East. It was raw, unrefined, shocking. Nevertheless Mortimer filled ten pages, letter-size, and sent them to Maisie Hooper. Two of the pages bore his impressions of Galena; two more described the fight and ingeniously explained his presence thereat; three contained an appreciation of the peril in which he had stood from stray bullets and speculated on the feelings of his correspondent if he had been accidentally killed; and the other three were of a private, personal nature—the kind that men curse and burn in after years if they have the luck to reclaim them, and women treasure in secret places for the term of their natural lives. Maisie cried a little as she read, and kissed the signature.