“Well, suh,” spoke the Colonel, pulling his hat over his eyes, “shall we stroll a piece?” 74
“Might better,” assented Bill. “The gentleman may find something of interest right in the open. How are you on the goose, sir?” he demanded of me.
“The goose?” I uttered.
“Yes. Keno.”
“I am a stranger to the goose,” said I.
He grunted.
“It gives a quick turn for a small stake. So do the three-card and rondo.”
Of passageway there was not much choice between the middle of the street and the borders. Seemed to me as we weaved along through groups of idlers and among busily stepping people that every other shop was a saloon, with door widely open and bar and gambling tables well attended. The odor of liquor saturated the acrid dust. Yet the genuine shops, even of the rudest construction, were piled from the front to the rear with commodities of all kinds, and goods were yet heaped upon the ground in front and behind as if the merchants had no time for unpacking. The incessant hammering, I ascertained, came from amateur carpenters, including mere boys, here and there engaged as if life depended upon their efforts, in erecting more buildings from knocked-down sections like cardboard puzzles and from lumber already cut and numbered.
My guides nodded right and left with “Hello, Frank,” “How are you, Dan?” “Evening, Charley,” and so on. Occasionally the Colonel swept off 75 his hat, with elaborate deference, to a woman, but I looked in vain for My Lady in Black. I did not see her—nor did I see her peer, despite the fact that now and then I observed a face and figure of apparent attractiveness.
Above the staccato of conversation and exclamation there arose the appeals of the barkers for the gambling resorts.