Page:West of Dodge (1926).pdf/82

 nitude being a thing unique in his experience. Mrs. Charles led the way up the kitchen steps, glowing with pleasure in having somebody to whom the commonplace of her daily life was wonderful. She pushed open the folding screen doors, fanning the waiting flies away with her apron.

"I'm feedin' between sixty and seventy men every day," she explained. "It takes a lot of grub to fill up that many railroaders."

"Why, it looks like a factory," said Dr. Hall, his amazement unfeigned.

An immense range occupied one end of the car, its commodious top filled with large copper boilers in which the evening meal was steaming with the mingled odor of potatoes, onions, cabbage and beef. A large dark woman was taking pies out of the oven, adding them to an astonishing array of their mates which stood on a long, narrow table close at hand.

"Angy and me do the cookin', all but the bread," Mrs. Charles explained. "Perry, her old man, he does the bakin' in a mud oven outside. He's a Mexican, his name's Perez, but everybody calls him Perry. We use close to a hundred loaves a day."

"That's a lot of bread for seventy men."

"The men say good bread's half the battle, 'specially the Irish. But they eat everything else accordin'. I buy more beef every day from the butcher in this town than all the rest of the people put together."

Mrs. Charles' cooking utensils hung around the walls near the stove, her thick cups and plates, classified like exhibits in a museum, filling many shelves in the other