Page:West of Dodge (1926).pdf/183

 That thought was as comfortable as money put away in a safe place. He was a free man in a land that would make slaves of men in their labor of subduing it, ruin many of them and break their hearts, to cast them off in a tattered vagabondage, as other regions of that vast prairie had done by other men within the confines of the immense parallelogram called Kansas.

Charley Burnett was approaching, coming from the depot, where a little gang of loafers had collected in anticipation of the west-bound train, which would stop for water. Its news-butcher would alight in black alpaca coat and cap, like some impertinent young crow, offering newspapers from the centers of midwestern civilization.

The warm sun had brought Burnett out without his coat. He was wearing a white shirt with extremely full sleeves, which were drawn up baggily at the elbows by fancy elastic bands. He came swaggering down the slope of the platform, hands in his pockets, his narrow-brimmed straw hat pushed back to show the elegant sweep of hair that came down in a sleek-plastered loop over his left eye. Hall felt there was something obscene about the fellow; it seemed to be his legs.

Burnett was not grinning this morning, although there was a bland, patronizing expression in his face, a natural endowment that gave him the look of an affable good fellow in the eyes of men and women of a certain type. He stopped a few feet away from Hall's door, saying nothing, just standing with hands in his pockets in a thoughtful way, as if he turned the advisability of some contemplated action in his mind. Hall ignored him, caring little about the man, one way or another, neither curious nor annoyed by his silence.