"What?"
Gordon laughed again.
"I remember you in the smoker, only – you seemed to have a – a patch over your left eye."
"Sure."
"Now you haven't got it?"
"No."
"I'm not curious, only – "
The stranger's eyes lit ironically.
"Sure you ain't. That's the hotel. Peter McSwain's. He's the boss. He's a friend of mine, an' I guess he'll fix you right for the night."
The snub was decided but gentle. The man's deep, musical voice contained no suggestion of displeasure. However, he had made the other feel that he had been guilty of unpardonable rudeness.
He was reduced to silence for the rest of the journey to the hotel, and gave himself up to consideration of this new position in which he now found himself. The one great fact that stood out in his mind was that he had gained another day on the wrong side of his ledger, and, however wrong he had been in his first attempt at fortune, his course had been hopelessly diverted into a still more impossible channel. The absurdity of the situation inclined him to amusement, but the knowledge of the real seriousness of it held him troubled.
As they neared the hotel his curiosity further made itself felt. The place was an ordinary frame building with a veranda. It was square and squat, like a box. It was two-storied, with windows, five in all, and a center doorway. These were dotted on the face of it like raisins in a pudding. Its original paint was undoubtedly white, but that seemed to have long since succumbed to the influence of the weather, and now suggested a hopeless hue which was anything but inspiriting.
Leaning against the door-casing, in his shirt-sleeves, was a smallish, florid man with ruddy hair. His waistcoat was almost as cheerful as his face, and, judging by the sound of his voice as he talked to a number of men lounging on the veranda, the latter quite matched the pattern of his violently checked trousers.
"That's Peter," remarked One Eye, the name, failing a better, Gordon still thought of his companion by. "He's a bright boy, is Peter," he added, chuckling.
"The proprietor of the – hotel?" said Gordon, interested.
"Sure."
Then a hail reached them from the veranda.
"Got back, Silas?" cried the loud-voiced hotel-keeper.
"Just what you say yourself," retorted Silas amiably. "Seems to me I bought a ticket and just got off the train. Still, ther' ain't nothing certain in this world except – graft."
"That's so," laughed the other. "Still, ther' ain't much of a shadow 'bout you, so we'll take it as real. Who's your friend?"
The hotel-keeper eyed Gordon with a view to trade. The man called Silas laughed and turned to Gordon.
"Guess I didn't get your name. Mine's Mallinsbee – Silas Mallinsbee. I'm a rancher, way out ther' in the foothills."
Gordon thought for a moment. Then he decided to use two of his given names in preference to his father's.
"Mine's Gordon Van Henslaer. Glad to meet you."
"Van Henslaer?" Mallinsbee's eyes twinkled. "Guess the first and last letters on your grip are spare. Kind of belong back east. How-do?" Then, without waiting for a reply, he turned to McSwain and the men on the veranda who were interestedly surveying Gordon. "This is Mister Gordon Van Henslaer from New York. Thought he'd like to break his journey west and get a look around Snake's Fall."
Gordon laughed.
"I was persuaded at the last minute," he added. "Can you let me have a room?"
McSwain became active.
"Sure. Guess we're pretty busy these times, with the town gettin' ready to boom. But I guess I ken fix any friend of Silas Mallinsbee. Ther's a room they calculated makin' into a bathroom back of the house, but some slick Alec figured the boys of Snake's Fall were prejudiced, so cut it out. It's small, but we got a bed fixed ther', an' you ken clean yourself at the trough out back. Come right along in."
Gordon was half inclined to protest, but Mallinsbee's voice came opportunely —
"I told you Peter 'ud fix you right. I've slept in that room myself, and you'll find it elegant sleepin', if you don't get a nightmare and get jumping around. We'll go right in."
Gordon's protest died on his lips. Mr. Mallinsbee had a persuasion all his own. There was a humorous geniality about him that was quite irresistible to the younger man, nor could he forget the manner in which he had helped him after the debacle on the train. He felt that it would have been churlish to refuse his good offices.
They passed into the building. The office was plainly furnished. A few Windsor chairs, a table, an empty stove, a few nigger pictures on the walls, and a large register for guests' names. This was the whole scheme.
Gordon flung down his grip.
"Well, I'm thankful to be off that train, anyway," he said. "Sign here, eh?" as Peter threw the book towards him. "Say," he added, glancing at the list of names above his, "you sure are busy."
Peter grinned complacently, while Mallinsbee looked on.
"You've hit this city at the psychological moment in its history, sir," he declared expansively. "You've hit it, sir, when, if I ken be allowed to use the expression, the snow's gone an' all the earth's jest bustin' with new life. You've hit it, sir, when fortunes are just going to start right into full growth with all the impetus of virgin soil. Snake's Fall, sir, is about to become the greatest proposition in the Western States, as a sure thing for soaking dollars into it. And here, sir, standing right at your elbow, is the courage, enterprise and intellect that's made it that way. Mr. Silas Mallinsbee is the father of this city, sir; he's more – he's the creator of it. And, sir, I congratulate you on the friendship of such a man, a friendship, sir, in which I have the honor to share."
He grabbed a filthy piece of blotting-paper and dabbed it cheerfully over Gordon's name in the book, while the latter smiled at the monument of enterprise himself.
"I was quite unaware – " he began. But Mallinsbee cut him short.
"Peter's a good feller," he declared, "but some seven sorts of a galoot once told him he ought to go into Congress, and he's been talking ever since. Ther's jest one thing 'll stop Peter talking, and that's orderin' a drink. Which I'm doin' right now. Peter, you'll jest hand us two cocktails. Your specials. And take what you like yourself."
Peter accepted the order with alacrity. His admiration of and friendship for Mallinsbee could not be doubted for a moment. And somehow Gordon felt it was a good sign. He returned in a few moments with the cocktails, and a glass of rye whiskey for himself.
"I know a better play than my special cocktails," he said, a huge wink distorting most of his ginger-hued features. "They're all right for customers, but I ain't no use fer picklin' my liver. How?"
"Here's to the extermination of all 'sharps,'" said Mallinsbee in his deep, rolling voice, and with a meaning glance in Gordon's direction.
Gordon nodded.
"And here's to the confusion of graft and grafters."
All three drank and set their glasses down.
"Graft?" said Mallinsbee thoughtfully. Then he shrugged his massive shoulders and laughed. "It's not a heap of use blaming grafters for their graft. They can't help it, any more than you can help scrappin' when a feller hits your wad on the crook. Graft – why, I just hate to think of the ways of graft. But you can't get through life without it; anyway, not life on this earth. I used to think graft a specialty of this country, but guess I was wrong. I'd localized. It don't belong to any one country more than another. It belongs to life; to our human civilization. It's the time limit of life causes the trouble. Nature makes it a cinch we've all got to be rounded up in the get-rich-quick corral. We start life foolish. Then for a while we get a sight more foolish. Then for a few mousy years we take on quite a nice bunch of sense. After that we start getting foolish again, and then the time limit comes right down on the backs of our necks like an