Page:Short Grass (1926).pdf/75

 He could see the night operator sitting in the bay window before his chattering instruments, a shade over his eyes. The semaphore signal was white, showing a clear line. Dunham wondered if the nine-twenty was going to be late.

From his post of waiting Dunham had the same view of the street that he had studied from the platform on his arrival. That seemed long ago, as the case always is when one measures by events instead of time, and the street appeared little more assuring than by day, although noise and activity revealed now much of what had been mysteriously silent then. People cut across the blocks of light lying before store windows, in some spots only their legs revealed, in others shoulders and heads, depending on the depth of the window and the position of the lamp.

There was the sound of horses coming and going. Now and then a troop or pair of riders, seldom one alone, swept past Dunham on the turn from the dusty highroad into the dusty street. There was no shrilling of children in the night; not a slip of childish figure flitted from beam to beam along the clattering sidewalks.

From Poteet's Casino the whine of a fiddle sounded, the running jounce of a hard-mauled piano in tight pursuit of its melody, and the rude rhythm of dancing feet. Dunham recalled the bartender's information, given with pride, that Poteet's was the only place in town where ladies were in attendance at night, ready to move a foot with any gentleman who desired to shake a shirt-tail in a dance. Charley Mallon had ex-