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it is possible for a healthy young man to live many days without eating, the average specimen of that genus begins to feel dissolution approaching with intolerable pangs if he must go unfed between breakfast and supper, especially when breakfast is early and supper promises to be late. Bill Dunham had a pretty good grinder inside him, and the grist he had put into it at Shad Brassfield's table that morning before sunrise was gone to the last grain before noon. He felt that he never would have the strength to lug his suitcase to Pawnee Bend if he put off starting until evening.

So it was under the lash of hunger, which has defeated armies and ruined nations, to say nothing of the tragedies it has brought into the lives of individual men, that Bill Dunham arrived at the string of cars, where the railroaders boarded and bunked, on the sidetrack at Pawnee Bend about three o'clock in the afternoon. He had put off the arrival as long as he could, mincing along from tie to tie when his normal stride was fully three feet, trying conscientiously to kill a little time.

But there he was at the edge of town in the middle of the afternoon of a bright sunny day, his great longing for a beefsteak pushing him forward harder than his desire for peace and quiet held him back.