After that a breathing space of ominous quiet, for the cowboys were gorgeously hungry after two days of mess-wagon fare.
Every hotel in town was prepared, though they had nothing to fear but hunger. Not one of the cowboys was likely to impose in the dining-room. They might, within the last two minutes, have been shooting up the town, filling themselves on rot-gut, cursing each other and everything else with fraternal abandon or fighting with the ruthlessness of fiends. In the dining-room they became more formal than the freshest "remittance-man" from "back home." They might hanker to seize their soup plates and gulp the contents into impatient throats, but they genteelly spooned it up, tilting it daintily to the last drop. They might tackle poached eggs with a knife, but they contemplated their comparative failure with gravity and patience. They never smiled or spoke above a whisper; and before they appeared at the table each and every one had stood in line in the hotel lavatory for a turn at the common brush and comb—unchained, because there was no danger of theft.
As befitted his rank, Dakota selected the Provincial, taking with him his crony, Alkali Sam. They would meet the others in the market-place after "dinner"—for the Provincial alone, run by a venturesome and popular Englishman, insisted on that untimely designation for its night meal.
Having introduced to their plated interiors all the liquid refreshment the remainder of the evening's entertainment could handle with steady aim, they recalled the assignation. Thither they repaired, solemnly studying legs and hands to verify their good judgment, nevertheless exhilarated by anticipation.
In the market-place Bean Slade, Muck Norsley, General Jones, the Dude, and a few lesser lights of the H-Lazy Z outfit, together with kindred spirits from other ranches, were impatiently cursing the wasted time, with the bars still open and their thirst unquenched. When the foreman arrived they cursed him and his companion with unaffected impartiality, tightened the cinches, rubbed the noses of their mounts, and climbed to the saddles.
When they dashed through the narrow exit to Toronto Street the fun was on.
Dakota struck straight for the Provincial opposite—a brilliant idea that staggered them all.
Now, the front door of the Provincial was attainable only by climbing fourteen steep steps and crossing a deep verandah. The height enabled loungers to expectorate in comfort over the railing to the sidewalk without inconveniencing themselves, and to some extent discouraged the visits of the too heavily loaded, who naturally gravitated to the more accessible bar door, situated lower down the street and on the street level.
Those fourteen steps had acquired a reputation that subdued the wildest spirits—like a Mounted Policeman's uniform. But one of Dakota's favourite amusements back in Montana—a stereotyped one in a cow country—was to ride through the saloon doors. To-night he was in the precise humour for shocking convention. Accordingly eight confirmed loungers were much scandalised by the nose of Dakota's horse thrusting itself in their midst.
Judas—Dakota's own name for his mount, because, as he said, you never know when he's going to sell you—lowered his head in response to the swift lash of Dakota's quirt, fixed his eyes on the centre step of the flight and ate up the climb in two leaps, drawing up with a slide as nose and neck protruded through the front door. Thereupon Dakota gently urged him into the rotunda, dodging the chandelier, and pulled up before the dining-room door, where he leaned forward, Stetson in hand, to see what the diners were making of it.