“Is this the best hotel?” I demanded.
“It is so reckoned, suh. There are other hostelries, and I do not desire, suh, to draw invidious comparisons, their proprietors being friends of mine. But I will go so far as to say that the Queen caters only to the élite, suh, and its patronage is gilt edge.”
I stepped to the window, the lower sash of which was up, and gazed out—down into that dust-fogged, 63 noisy, turbulent main street, of floury human beings and grime-smeared beasts almost within touch, boiling about through the narrow lane between the placarded makeshift structures. I lifted my smarting eyes, and across the hot sheet-iron roofs I saw the country south—a white-blotched reddish desert stretching on, desolate, lifeless under the sunset, to a range of stark hills black against the glow.
“There are no private rooms, then?” I asked, choking with a gulp of despair.
“You are perfectly private right here, suh,” assured the Colonel. “You may strip to the hide or you may sleep with your boots on, and no questions asked. Gener’ly speaking, gentlemen prefer to retain a layer of artificial covering—but you ain’t troubled much with the bugs, are you, Bill?”
He leveled this query at the frowsy, whiskered man, who had awakened and was blinking contentedly.
“I’m too alkalied, I reckon,” Bill responded. “Varmints will leave me any time when there’s fresh bait handy. That’s why I likes to double up. That there Saint Louee drummer carried off most of ’em from this gent’s bed, so he’s safe.”
“You are again to be congratulated, suh,” addressed the Colonel, to me. “Allow me to interdeuce you. Shake hands with my friend Mr. Bill Brady. Bill, I present to you a fellow-citizen of mine from grand old New York State.” 64
The frowsy man struggled up, shifted his revolver so as not to sit on it, and extended his hand.
“Proud to make yore acquaintance, sir. Any friend of the Colonel’s is a friend o’ mine.”