Page:The Baron of Diamond Tail (1923).pdf/23



RIMMITT'S hotel stood a hundred yards or thereabout from the lawyer's office which Dan Gustin had just quitted. Between the two places there stretched a plank sidewalk of varying height and width, according to the caprice, liberality or business convenience of the property-holders fronting the street. Here it ran at street level, the débris of crushed tin cans, blowing papers, scattered oats from nose-bags, littered hay, lodged against its plank-ends, even overflowing upon it; along a little way it rose a foot to accord with the foundation of a saloon; again it became a platform in front of the principal store, upon which women could step directly from their wagons when they drove in to trade.

Along this unequal way, where loafers sat on whittled benches, lounged in doorways, leaned against porch props, Dan Gustin went pegging in his high-heeled boots like a mule in a Mexican chain hobble, holding a straight course for the hotel, past the doors of temptation. The marks of his spur straps were polished on his insteps, the chafing of their metal was plain upon his heels, but he had laid those galling instruments aside for this excursion by wagon and, as he walked in review of those of his own calling who idled by the way, he felt like a plucked drake set loose before the flock.