“I reckon you won't discover such a thing here,” dryly. “Got seven in a room upstairs, and others corded along the hall. Better share my cell—only thing to do.”
“That would be asking too much—I can turn in at the corral with Neb; I've slept in worse places.”
“Couldn't think of it, Keith,” and the doctor got up. “Besides, you sleep at night, don't you?”
“Usually, yes,” the other admitted.
“Then you won't bother me any—no doctor sleeps at night in Sheridan; that's our harvest time. Come on, and I'll show you the way. When morning comes I'll rout you out and take my turn.”
Keith had enjoyed considerable experience in frontier hotels, but nothing before had ever quite equalled this, the pride of Sheridan. The product of a mushroom town, which merely existed by grace of the temporary railway terminus, it had been hastily and flimsily constructed, so it could be transported elsewhere at a moment's notice. Every creak of a bed echoed from wall to wall. The thin partitions often failed to reach the ceiling by a foot or two, and the slightest noise aroused the entire floor. And there was noise of every conceivable kind, in plenty, from the blare of a band at the Pioneer Dance Hall opposite, to the energetic cursing of the cook in the rear. A discordant din of voices surged up from the street below—laughter, shouts, the shrieks of women, a rattle of dice, an occasional pistol shot, and the continuous yelling of industrious “barkers.” There was no safety anywhere. An exploding revolver in No. 47 was quite likely to disturb the peaceful slumbers of the innocent occupant of No. 15, and every sound of quarrel in the thronged bar-room below caused the lodger to curl up in momentary expectation of a stray bullet coursing toward him through the floor. With this to trouble him, he could lie there and hear everything that occurred within and without. Every creak, stamp, and snore was faithfully reported; every curse, blow, snarl reechoed to his ears. Inside was hell; outside was Sheridan.
Wearied, and half dead, as Keith was, sleep was simply impossible. He heard heavy feet tramping up and down the hall; once a drunken man endeavored vainly to open his door; not far away there was a scuffle, and the sound of a body falling down stairs. In some distant apartment a fellow was struggling to draw off his tight boots, skipping about on one foot amid much profanity. That the boot conquered was evident when the man crawled into the creaking bed, announcing defiantly, “If the landlord wants them boots off, let him come an' pull 'em off.” Across the hall was a rattle of chips, and the voices of several men, occasionally raised in anger. Now and then they would stamp on the floor as an order for liquid refreshments from below. From somewhere beyond, the long-drawn melancholy howl of a distressed dog greeted the rising moon.
Out from all this pandemonium Keith began to unconsciously detect the sound of voices talking in the room to his left. In the lull of obstructing sound a few words reached him through the slight open space between wall and ceiling.
“Hell, Bill, what's the use goin' out again when we haven't the price?”
“Oh, we might find Bart somewhere, and he'd stake us. I guess I know enough to make him loosen up. Come on; I'm goin'.”