“I spur my chair,” grinned Hashknife Hartley, a tall, thin, serious-faced cowboy. “And thataway—” he shoved in a stack of chips and leaned back in his chair—“I ride ’em steady, while you mail-order cowpunchers wobble all over and expose yore hands. Cost yuh six bits to call, ‘Stumpy’.”
“Not me.” The wizen-faced one threw down his cards. “You call him, ‘Nebrasky’.”
“F’r six bits?” Nebraska Holley shook his head. “Nawup. I’ve paid too danged many six bits to see him lay down big hands. Anyway, I’ve had enough of this kinda poker. I wish t’ —— that engineer would go easy f’r a while. I ain’t slept since night afore last, and I didn’t sleep good then.”
“He’s whistlin’ for somethin’,” observed Hashknife.
“Mebbe he’s scared of the dark, and he’s whistlin’ for company.”
“Whistlin’ for a station,” yawned Stumpy. “I asked the conductor about them whistles.”
“Must be a wild station,” observed Sleepy Stevens. “He’s sure sneakin’ up on it in the dark.”
The train had slowed to a snail’s pace, and finally stopped with a series of jolts and jerks.
“We’re at a station,” declared Stumpy, flattening his nose against a window pane. “I can see the lights of the town.”
The conductor came storming into the caboose, swearing at the top of his voice.