"Come on," he said, moving back through the blackness, towards the end of the train.
As I turned to follow him I saw the red-haired woman step down from the car and hand her suitcase to a man who had been awaiting her; they stood for a moment in conversation; as I moved away I heard their low voices.
Reaching the last car our guide descended to the track and crossed to the other side. We followed. My first glimpse of what lay beyond gave me the impression that a large railroad yard was spread out before me, its myriad switch-lights glowing red through the black night. But as my eyes became accustomed to the darkness, I saw that here was not a maze of tracks, but a maze of houses, and that the lights were not those of switches, but of windows and front doors: night signs of the traffic to which the houses were dedicated.
The Cliff House has a Sorrento setting and hectic turkey-trotting nights
"There," said our acquaintance. "A few years back you'd have seen this in almost any town out here, but things are changing; I don't know another place on this whole line that shows off its red light district the way Elko does."
After looking for a time at the sinister lights, we re-crossed the railroad track. As we stepped up to the platform, two figures coming in the opposite direction rounded the rear car and, crossing the rails, moved away towards the illuminated region. I heard their voices; they were the red haired woman and the man who had met her at the train.
Was she a new arrival? I think not, for she seemed to know the man, and she had, somehow, the air of getting home. Was she an "inmate" of one of the establishments? Again I think not, for, with her look of hardness, there was also one of capability, and more than any one thing it is laziness and lack of capability which cause sane women to give up freedom for such "homes." No; I think the woman from the train was a proprietor who had been away on a vacation, or perhaps a "business trip."
Suppose that to be true. Suppose that she had been away for several weeks. What was her feeling at seeing, again, the crimson beacon in her own window? What must it be like to get home, when home is such a place? Could one's mental attitude become so warped that one might actually look forward to returning—to being greeted by the "family"? Could it be that, at sight of that red light, flaring over there across the tracks, one might heave a happy sigh and say to oneself: "Ah! Home again at last! There's no place like home"—?