"All right, guess I got enough."
He pulled forth a limp sack of powdery tobacco, and spilled some grains into a brown cigarette paper, twisting it deftly and bending over the ends. Then he smoked with such enjoyment that I envied him.
"Where are we going, have you any idea?" I asked.
"Search me," he said, inhaling deeply; "the guy in charge isn't exactly a free information bureau. When it comes to peddling the bull con he's there, but when you try to pry off a few slabs of cold hard fact it's his Sunday off."
"But," I persisted, "have you no idea?"
"Well, one thing you can bank on, they'll work the Judas out of us. The gentle grafter nestles in our midst. This here's a cinch game and we are the fall guys. The contractors are a bum outfit. They'll squeeze us at every turn. There was two plunks to the employment man; they got half. Twenty for railway fare; they come in on that. Stop at certain hotels: a rake-off there. Stage fare: more graft. Five dollars a week for board: costs them two-fifty, and they will be stomach robbers at that. Then they'll ring in twice as many men as they need, and lay us off half the time, so that we just about even up on our board bill. Oh, I'm onto their curves all right."
"Then," I said, "if you know so much why did you come with us?"
"Well, if I know so much you just bet I know some more. I'll go one better. You watch my smoke."
He talked on with a wonderful vivid manner and an outpouring knowledge of life, so that I was hugely interested. Yet ever and anon an allusion of taste would betray him, and at no time did I fail to see that his roughness was only a veneer. As it turned out he was better educated by far than I, a Yale boy taking a post-graduate course in the University of Hard Luck.
My reserve once thawed, I told him much of my simple life. He listened, intently sympathetic.