PAGE 5
The Spellbinder
by
“Look here, Wesley,” his companion interrupted, ” quit it ! You’re getting light-headed. Get rid of such fool thoughts as those or you’ll be going off to the insane asylum; and mighty little use your family will have of you there !”
Orr gave him no answer. Robbins watched his impassive face and frowned.
“He’s not bad-hearted, but he’s desperate. You can’t appeal to a desperate man,” he thought, “and the other boys are the same way. There’ll be wild work there to-night, unless that young fool has the papers with him and will give them up. You’re a fool, George Robbins, to mix yourself up in it on the chance of getting a few dollars from a Kansas City paper for a telegram!”
Silently the two men looked at the nearing lights, while the wagon creaked and swayed and rattled over the road.
“We got to save the lantern to go home by,” Orr remarked at last, “else I’d light up; they ain’t got any more lights in the streets. But I guess we can see.”
There were enough lights in the windows to reveal the wide untidiness of the street, the black, boarded windows of the empty shops, the gaps in the sidewalk, the haggard gardens, where savage winds had blown the heart out of deserted rose-trees and geraniums. In general the sky-line was low and the roofs the simplest peaks; but it was broken in a few places by three and four storied brick buildings of the florid pomp on which a raw Western town loves to lavish its money. Now they loomed, dark and silent, landmarks of vanished ambition. Robbins, who was a man of parts and education, with a fanciful turn, felt the air of defeat and desolation hanging over the town choke him like miasma. To him the dreariness was the more poignant for the half a dozen little shops that still flickered their challenge to fate in the guise of a dim coal-oil lamp in the window. There appeared to be no customers at these dismal marts; in some cases not even the shop-keeper was visible, and only the stove in the rear of the room kept a lonesome red eye on the shelves. The sole sparks of life in the place were at the hotel. It had been built “during the boom”–a large rectangle of wood, with a cheap and gaudy piazza, all painted four shades of green, which the climate had burned and blistered and bleached into one sickly, mottled brown. Long ago the stables of the hostelry had been abandoned, but this night the stable yard was full of wagons.
The upper story of the hotel was dark, and the greater part of the lower story; but the kitchen was bright, and yellow light leaked through every chink and crack in the office blinds.
“Boys have turned out well, I guess,” said Robbins.
“They better turn out!” said Orr.
No word was spoken by either while they unhitched their horses, led them within the sheds, and tied them among the sorry company already housed. Robbins noted that after Orr had laid the blanket which had served them for robe on one thin back, he flung his own quilt over the other. Then they stumbled (for they were unwieldy with cold) through the yard to the hotel.
The office was full of men, gathered about the stove, talking to each other. The innkeeper sat behind his counter, affecting to busy himself with a blotted ledger. Originally he had been a stout man, but he had lost flesh of late years. He was wrinkled and flabby, and the furtive eyeshots that he cast toward the stove were anxious beyond his concealing. Any one, however, could perceive that matters of heavy import were being discussed. The miserably clad men about the stove all looked sullen. There was none of the easy-going badinage so habitual with Westerners. They exchanged glances rather than words; what words were spoken were uttered in low tones.