Walcott dragged his eyes away from the door. “Yeah,” he said: “See the way she came in? Standin’ in the sunlight like that, showing all she got. That girl’s a tease. She’s going to get into trouble one of these days, you see.”
Freedman leered. “You don’t know nothin’,” he said. “You can’t teach that babe a thing. I’m tellin’ you, she’s hot. I’ve seen her at night with one of those engineer fellows in the fields.”
The other two jerked their chairs forward. They leant over the table. George looked at them. They had suddenly lowered their voices. He couldn’t hear what they were saying. He hesitated, then, feeling himself excluded, he moved further down the bar, and began to polish glasses. Anyway, he told himself, it wasn’t too healthy talking about old Butch Hogan’s daughter Old Butch was still dangerous.
A long, starved shadow of a man tell across the floor of the saloon, making George look up sharply.
The man stood in the doorway holding the swing doors apart with his hands. A battered, greasy hat pulled over his face hid his eyes. George looked at him, saw the frayed, stained coat, the threadbare trousers and the broken shoes. He automatically reached forward and put the cover on the free-lunch bowl.
“Another goddam bum,” he thought.
The man came in with a limping shuffle. He looked at the three at the table, but they didn’t see him. They were still wrangling about the girl. George leant forward a little over the bar and spat in the brass spittoon. Then having expressed his attitude, he straightened up and went on polishing a glass.
“The name’s Dillon,” the man said slowly.
George said, “Yeah? Ain’t nothin’ to me What’s yours?”
“Gimme a glass of water.” Dillon’s voice was deep and gritty.