Page:Lost Ecstasy (1927).pdf/113

 They became gradually conscious of their clothing and their big hats. And undeniably—oh, very undeniably—there clung to them both the odor of the cattle cars. Once a pretty girl at their table in a restaurant sniffed and then moved away, and Tom was indignant.

"What's the matter with us?" he asked, aggrieved. "The way she acted, we might be a pair of skunks."

"Well, we aren't a couple of perfume bottles at that," said Bill philosophically, and went on with his meal.

There were others, of course, who stared at the big cowboy in his wide hat, with his swaggering walk, his broad shoulders and slim waist. Now and then a girl made some signal to them—or to Tom, rather—and they would fall into step beside her, one on each side.

"I didn't know the circus was in town. Where'd you fellows come from?"

"Out of the West, where men are men," they would chant in unison.

But these little dalliances were necessarily brief. They would saunter back to the track, swing into the caboose, and go back to the poker game again; the floor was littered with the stumps of endless cigarettes. One brakeman produced a bottle of moonshine, but there was not enough liquor to cause any trouble, or to interfere with Tom's luck at the cards.

He was a hundred dollars to the good when they reached Chicago.