Page:Short Grass (1926).pdf/26

 A narrow-faced young man, with long head and dark eyes; a big nose with a hard backbone, lean cheeks that needed a shave; a mouth that had not taken much sweet pudding out of little spoons, from the stretch of it and its look of having the latch down, the string pulled inside.

"Passing through?" MacKinnon inquired, Bill waiting with poised pen to spread his college hand on the register.

"Well, no; not exac'ly passin' through," Bill re plied, with a sort of horsetrader confidence that seemed to tell much 'while disclosing no fact upon which a future action might be based. "Not what you could exac'ly call passin' through."

"I inquired on a point of information," MacKinnon explained, "not from curiosity or any wish to pry into your business. When a man steps off of the train in this town his past goes on with it, as far as we know or give a damn. He starts here with nothing behind him but his conscience, if he ever had one, and nothing ahead of him but the future. If you're goin' to be one of us for a few days you're qualified to sign our petition. We count a man a citizen if he's here a day, and an old-timer if he stays a week."

"Yes, sir," said Bill, not seeing any wordhold for a more sensible comment on the host's statement of facts relating to citizenship in the town of Pawnee Bend.

"Right here," MacKinnon directed, flipping over a section of the register to a place marked by a blotter between the leaves. "Just your name, and not where you're from. We're gettin' up a petition to organize