Page:Short Grass (1926).pdf/20

 If he wasn't a married man and tied down by his wife and kids he'd hit the breeze for Pawnee Bend on the first freight he could find a side-door open. He knew a feller that went to Pawnee Bend and opened a joint—so they termed illicit saloons in prohibition Kansas in those days—and made money so fast he couldn't count it. Just had to let track of it go, it came in so fast. His name was Mooney; he used to run a section on the U.P.

So, together with the growing call of romance and the advice of Dutch Gus, Bill had cashed in at the nursery and taken a ticket straight to Pawnee Bend. He was not adventurer enough for an open side-door in a freight car. Now he was there, in Pawnee Bend, and romance seemed to have fled away out of it, leaving the town so small and bleak, the country so raw and rude, big and lonesome that it hurt the bare edges of a man just to stand there that way wondering where to go. But there was sure room for a feller to throw his feet! Dutch Gus was right about that part of it, and that was a cinch.

Bill felt pretty much as a man feels when he tries to swim a wide piece of water the first time: sorry he had attempted it, but his reputation being staked on the venture he will not turn and go back. He looked across the track at the flat, unadorned little town, knowing he had to make his beginning in it by finding a place to leave his suitcase and a bed to take his repose. The bare, heartless, unfriendly look of it depressed him more than the empty vastness of the land in which it lay. It looked like a lair of mystery; every