Page:Lost Ecstasy (1927).pdf/372

 Only "lose control" was not what Tom said.

Now and then he was quarrelsome. The colored hostlers and grooms stood in deadly terror of him.

"Here, you Jefferson, what you doing with that team?"

"The feed pile man, he sade"

"To hell with the feed pile man. Bring it here."

But he had no time for violence. He was the first man up in the morning, the last man to board the train at night. Under the lot superintendent, it was his men who moved the show to and from the track. The train pulled in, the great baggage teams were unloaded, the enormous red and gold wagons and trucks were rolled down from their cars; then rocking and swaying, carrying their heavy loads of poles, of canvas and of collapsible seats, they started for the lot. At night of the last day the process reversed.

Tom did not mind the work. In a way it suited him. He had little time to think, no time for vain regrets. He had no friends. Murphy had left the organization, and he no longer joined the crowd for craps or poker. His weekly salary he sent, with practically no deductions, to the bank at Ursula. He was very shabby; when his clothing got too bad he put on overalls, and let the Boss Hostler be the gentleman of the outfit and the Ringmaster its dandy.

But now and then, mostly during meal times, he would limp into the long tent where the saddle horses munched their hay, and walk the length of it. He cared well for his own big horses, but it was the saddle stock that he loved. Sometimes, but not often, he thought of the Miller.

When he found he was in Kay's city it scarcely roused him. With the canvas set, however, he wandered around to the men's dressing tent and stood staring at it somberly. That was where she was standing when he first saw her, and over there was the place where she had sat on a box, after they were married, and waited for him.

He went over. There was a box there now, an old box; it might have been the very one.

"All right, girl?"

"Fine."

"And happy?"