Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/188

176 undecided, as she got aboard. "Good night," she said. "I 'll see you to-morrow."

He remained in the middle of the street—watching the car climb the slope of the avenue—until a moving-van almost ran him down. The shouts of the driver sent him back to the sidewalk. The movement of the late shoppers turned him round. He drifted away aimlessly.

At midnight, he came back to the foot of Christopher Street and stood looking out at the bivouac of the army of trucks, like a deserter returned to his camp. His hat was slanted down over his eyes; the torn ends of his celluloid collar were protruding under his chin; he carried his coat over one shoulder. He stepped down heavily into the gutter and stumbled across the road. "A' right, Jim," he answered the challenge of the watchman. "I 'm goin' to sleep in the cart."

Like most New York truckmen, Carney owned his own team and wagon; but unlike most of them, he hired out by the day, instead of by the week—for he had the best horses on the water-front, and he wished to reserve the right to keep them in their stalls whenever the streets were too dangerously iced in winter, or too dangerously sun-beaten in summer, for them to be at work. So, when he woke next morning, he was under no necessity of asking leave of absence for the day.

Long before the other drivers had arrived at their stables, he was hitching up. And by the time the