“But you’re not going back to work to-night?”
“Not me,” he laughed, cheerfully reckless of his grammar now that his school-days were over. “I’m just going out to walk around the block and have a think; that’s all.”
“What about?”
“Oh, I don’t know; everything, I guess. Don’t you worry about me. I’m all right.” And to prove it he went off whistling and with his hands in his pockets.
The after-supper stroll, which was entirely aimless as to its direction, led him first through the quiet streets of the “railroad colony.” In its beginnings Brewster had been strictly a railroad town; but now it had become the thriving metropolis of Timanyoni Park; a city in miniature, with electric lights and power furnished by the harnessed river, with some manufacturing, and with an irrigated wheat and apple-growing country around it to take the place of the cattle ranges which had preceded the coming of the railroad.
Now, though Larry’s stroll was aimless, as we have said, that is, in any conscious sense of having a definite destination, there was just one direction it was almost bound to take. Born and bred in a railroad atmosphere, it was second nature for him to drift toward the handsome, lava-stone building which served the double purpose of the Nevada Short Line’s passenger station and general office headquarters.
The long concreted approach platform running down from the foot of the main street offered itself as a cab rank for the station; and as Larry traversed it, still deep in the brown study, General Manager Maxwell’s smart green roadster cut a half circle in the turning area, whisked accurately into its parking space between two other cars, and the fresh-faced young fellow who had played at first base on the Brewster High School nine in the winning series with Red Butte, climbed out and hailed the brown-studier.
“Hullo, Curly!” he called, using the school nickname which Larry had long since come to accept merely because he had never been able to think up any way of killing it off. “What are you doing down here at this time o’ night?”
“‘Time o’ night’ happens to be time of the early evening,” Larry corrected; adding: “One thing I’m not doing is joy-riding in a green chug-wagon.”
“Tag,” said the general manager’s son good-naturedly. “Neither am I. Father has a conference of some sort on with the bosses. I don’t know what’s up, but I suppose it’s all this anarchist talk that’s been going around and stirring things up. He ’phoned me up home a little while ago and told me to drive down and wait for him.”