“Two bright eyes are always worth looking into,” said I.
That was some ride!
The stage wallowed into Breed City about nightfall. It had tipped over twice on the way, its wheels sinking into “honey-pots” of mud, rolling over slowly like a tired cow lying down to rest. We swearing passengers had been compelled to pry it up with poles borrowed from a rancher. During these waits and during the meal at a sort of half-way house, Judge Kingsley, mud-spattered, scared into conniptions when he thought of what would be coming behind us from Royal City, miserable as a wet cat, and seeing nothing ahead for consolation, muttered to me constantly his familiar taunt that he was being teamed about the country by a lunatic.
I didn’t know exactly what to say, and made him still angrier by confessing that he was undoubtedly correct.
We left the coach in front of the hotel that the driver had recommended, and we stepped from the board sidewalk like passengers disembarking from a boat; the mud in the street was fairly a river of mire.
“Even if you don’t like the ‘Prairie Pride’ very well,” my new friend had said, “you’ll have a lot of fun watching the White Ghost operate. There’s only one of his kind in these parts, or anywhere else in the world, so fur’s I know. Folks come from a long ways off and stand around the windows and doors of the ‘Prairie Pride’ hotel and see the White Ghost perform. Oh no, I don’t mean that the house is haunted. The White Ghost is the waiter. He’s the only waiter they have in the dining-room. He won’t have anybody else there. He prides himself on doing it all alone. Says he is the only waiter in the world who can handle fifty guests and four Chinese cooks single-handed and keep everybody happy and busy eating. He’s a little cracked in the head, but he’s sure a wonder on his feet. A streak of white lightning would have to whistle for him to turn around and come back and meet it.”
Now this bit of information, when I listened to it, stirred in me merely a half-determination to go to another hotel, where the waiter did not give a show along with his services.
How often does man slight some odd tools that Fate lays in his way, especially when Fate doesn’t draw his attention to them!
The “Prairie Pride” hotel deserved its name in some measure. It had smooth floors, real doors, and walls of plaster. Its big office thronged with guests, whose character was plain enough. There were slick drummers and bearded and booted miners fresh from the hills, down for a bit of a spring whirl, and there were mining engineers and such like.
We were given a room and at the same time we were given a hint that we’d better hurry to supper before the hungry mob cleaned up all the best dishes. Again my clothes coaxed this courtesy!