Page:The Torrents of Spring - Ernest Hemingway (1987 reprint).pdf/69

 bright electric lights, they played pool. At the end of an hour and a half, Yogi Johnson found that he owed the little Indian four dollars and thirty cents.

"You shoot a pretty nice stick," he remarked to the small Indian.

"Me not shoot so good since the war," the small Indian replied.

"White chief like to drink a little?" asked the larger Indian.

"Where do you get it?" asked Yogi. "I have to go to Cheboygan for mine."

"White chief come with red brothers," the big Indian said.

They left the pool-table, placed their cues in the rack on the wall, paid at the counter, and went out into the night.

Along the dark streets men were sneaking home. The frost had come and frozen everything stiff and cold. The chinook had not been a real chinook, after all. Spring had not yet come, and the men who had commenced their orgies were halted by the chill in the air that told them the chinook wind had been a fake. That foreman, Yogi thought, he'll catch hell to-morrow. Perhaps it had all been engineered by the pump-manufacturers to get the foreman out of his job. Such things were done. Through the dark of the night men were sneaking home in little groups.

The two Indians walked on either side of Yogi. They turned down a side street, and all three halted before a building that looked something like a stable. It was a stable. The two Indians opened the door and Yogi followed them inside. A ladder led upstairs to the floor above. It