For want of anything better to occupy his attention, Phil strolled in. He called for a glass of beer at the bar. While waiting service, he took in his surroundings.
Several men were lounging at the bar talking loudly, smoking, spitting carelessly and drinking. At a table, near the window, a long-legged, somewhat wistful-looking young man, with prominent front teeth and a heavy mop of auburn hair, was sitting in front of a glass of liquor, gazing lazily into the vacant roadway. From an adjoining room off the saloon rough voices rose every now and again in argument over a poker game which was in progress there between a number of men who appeared to be in off some of the neighbouring ranches.
As Phil surveyed the scene, a man galloped up to the hotel entrance, tossed his reins over his horse’s head and jingled loudly into the saloon. He was clean-cut, dark-skinned and red-haired, and walked with a swinging gait. He shouted the time of day to the bar-tender, as he kept on into the inner room where the card game was in progress.
Phil guessed him for the foreman of the cattlemen inside and conjectured that he had been giving them some instructions regarding their departure, but passed the incident from his mind as quickly as it had cropped up: and he was still slowly refreshing himself when half a dozen rough-looking men tumbled out of the card-room.
“Come on fellows! Drinks all round, Mack! Don’t miss a damned man in the room. Everybody’s havin’ one on me.”
The speaker hitched up his trousers, blew out a mouthful 50 of chewing tobacco and waved his arm invitingly.
The counter loungers gathered round in expectation, as the proprietor and his assistant busied themselves filling the welcome order.
“Hi, Wayward!” he continued, shouting over to the long-legged man sitting by the window. “What-ya drinkin’?”
There was no answer.
“Oh, hell!––he’s up in the clouds. Take him over a Scotch and soda, Pete.”