"See here, young feller. Don't get gay. Hit that gourd of yours another crack and maybe you'll knock some sense into it. We're six hours late, ain't we? We got three hours to make Kalamazoo in, ain't we? This show's got to get there on time, or there'll be H to pay and no pitch hot. Now go outside and stand in a door somewheres and let the wind blow through you. I'll wire you in the morning, or you can take the 5.40 and pick your trunk up at Kalamazoo.—Let her go, Johnny"—this to the engine-driver. "All aboard!"
Steve jerked a cigar from his waistcoat pocket, cut off the end, and said, with a bite-in-two-ten-penny-nail expression about his lips:
"Steve, you're 'it.' I'll git that trunk at Kalamazoo."
Then he crossed the platform, made his way to the street entrance, and stepped into the omnibus of the only hotel in the town.
When the swinging sign of the Two-dollar House, blurred in the whirl of the storm, hove in sight, Steve's face was still knotted in wrinkles. He had a customer in this town good for three hundred dozen table cutlery, and but for "this gang of cross-tie steppers," he said to himself, he would.... Here the hind heels of the 'bus hit the curb, cutting short Steve's anathema.
The drummer picked up his grip and made his way to the desk.
"What's the matter, Stevey?" asked Larry, the clerk. "You look sour."
"Sour? I am a green pickle, Larry, that's what I am—a green pickle. Been waiting five hours for my trunk in that oriental palm garden of yours you call a station. It was aboard a Special loaded with chorus girls and props. Conductor wouldn't dump it, and now it's gone on to Kalamazoo and——"
"Oh, but you'll get it all right. All you've got to do, Steve, is to——"