Page:Short Grass (1926).pdf/44

 such an important civic matter. So he was spotted to go.

Bill Dunham, as the six-hundredth citizen, didn't appear to count for much any longer. He chatted along in a friendly way with Mallon, disclosing nothing at all of his past, cautious of any claim of intention on the future. He was so taken with what Mallon had to tell him about the country, on which the bartender was well and widely informed, that he switched his attention from the fathers of the county to this lanky son of it, who had come there railroading with the first string of steel that was laid.

Some of the cowboys returned, bringing two or three recruits with them to take a squint from a respectful distance at the man who talked like a greenhorn but acted like something else. They ranged along to the farther end of the bar, which was an ample one, fully forty feet long, where Mallon shifted himself to attend them.

The banker and his two adjutants, as Bergen and Puckett appeared to be, shook hands with Bill again. MacKinnon suggested a cigar, which Bill agreed to without moral or physical qualm. As they puffed along back toward the hotel, MacKinnon made inquiry on Bill's future designs.

"Thinkin' of goin' railroadin', Mr. Dunham?"

"Well, not exac'ly what you could call railroadin'," Bill replied.

"If you were, I could put you next to Jim Cunningham, boss of the surfacin' gang, that works around two hundred Eyetalian dago fellers. You might land as