But a practiced eye would have said that the man who rode into Standing Rock this day was of that crew. His face was a fighting face, withal he was on in years, gray hair closely snugged to his head. In other days he had been a rugged man; but there was a sadness upon him now, a wistfulness in the eyes, that softened his boldly chiseled features.
That he moved unnoticed is proof again that our one cosmopolitan zone has ever been the great West. Spurs, bridle, saddlebags, reata, even the big, high-stepping stallion which he rode were foreign to northern Nevada. That they were Spanish or Mexican—the difference is slight in the West—no one cared a hoot. The desert is wide. Men have a habit of coming long distances, and from strange places. And best—far best of all—a man’s business was his own business!
The two trunk lines paralleled each other in passing through the town. In the short half mile between them, Standing Rock took form; half finished, half painted—a one-street town of one story buildings making a brave show with their Cripple Creek fronts.
Hard by the Espee tracks this monotonously regular sky line was broken. For there, wonder of wonders, stood a two-story brick structure—a hotel!—the pride of Ruby Valley; the Marble Palace; J. Scanlon and V. Escondido, proprietors.
Steer and wool money had financed it, hence Vincenzo. He was a petulant Basque, and although in the storied past he and his people had sprung from stock as Celtic as his partner’s, he—Vincenzo—was in a fair way of being erased by the versatile Scanlon. In quite the same fashion their institution had lost its chilling and undeserved title—unless the marble-topped bar were justification—and was called, in easy familiarity, the Palace.
The profits of this establishment were restricted solely to the first floor, for, save at times like this, or when some unfortunate commercial traveler missed No. 19 going west, no one ever thought of staying there the night. But, oh, the profits of that lower floor!—bar and keno, roulette and poker of a flexibility well calculated to satisfy the whim of the most jaded customer.
Having stabled his horse and placed his saddle, saddlebags and bed roll on a convenient peg, the stranger made for the door of this hostelry. It was a few minutes after five. The Diamond-Bar waddies were having their turn at the shipping pens. An hour later they would be making merry. Now, though, the street was deserted. The wool platform was directly in back of the hotel. The spur of track leading to it managed to squeeze past the hotel by the narrowest of margins.
Four loaded cars stood on the siding. By six o’clock another would be filled. A freight engine would shunt them upon the main line that evening, and start them on their long ride to Boston.
For another week this would go on. At least twenty heavy freighters, piled high with baled wool still reeking of the creosote dip, stood in the space about the platform waiting to be unloaded. More would come. Twenty-mule teams dragging three, and even four, wagons chained together would snake in the smelling fleece.
Standing Rock should have been a place of ample elbow room, but here, in man’s peculiar way, was its greatest activity jammed in a space so crowded that the stranger stopped to watch the Basque boys as they fought the big bales with their long, steel wool hooks.