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He was whirling a wheel and rolling a ball and calling out in his heavy voice. With him was a little, sallow-faced man, like a wolf, with sneaky, downcast eyes and restless hands. He answered to the name of Andy. These two were engaged in fleecing several blue-shirted, half- drunken spikers. Durade was playing faro with four other men, or at least there were that number seated with him.
The next instant the little room was dark, and Emma McChesney was marching down the long, red-carpeted hallway to the elevator, her head high, her face set. Down-stairs in the lobby "How about my trunks?" she inquired of a porter. That blue-shirted individual rubbed a hard brown hand over his cheek worriedly. "They ain't come." "Ain't come!" surprise disregarded grammar. Nope. No signs of 'em.
Up like a centaur he bounds against the sky line, up after him the long rank of ragged hat brims and blue-shirted, broad-belted, manly forms, up the plunging line of hard-tugging bays, their black tails streaming in the morning wind, and then Cranston's arm flings up aloft; up into plain view streams and flaps the silken guidon, the stars and stripes in swallow-tailed miniature that the troopers loved to see, and then the thud gives way to thunder, for as one man "C" troop strikes the gallop with the thronging Indian village not five hundred yards ahead.
Gone to the great city, the place "too big to live in." Gone there for knowledge, training, cultivation, larger life, and finer uses! Gone to study an art, an art! Risen beyond him "like a diamond in the sky." And he fool enough to come rambling back, blue-shirted and brown-handed, expecting to find her still a tavern maid! So, farewell fantasy! 'Twas better so; much better.
Here and there among the timber and along the brink little groups of dark objects, shifting slowly about, betrayed the presence of animal life, and afar out upon the prairie slopes tiny black spots on every side, perhaps a dozen in all, told the plains-practised eye that here was a cavalry bivouac a little detached force of Uncle Sam's blue-shirted troopers, thrown out from the shelter of fort or garrison, and lurking for some purpose in the heart of the Indian country.
Something of the kind was afoot, or rather a-saddle, as Louise rode down the Moonstone Trail, for beyond the turn and the rippling ford she saw a lithe, blue-shirted figure that she knew. Louise would not have admitted even to herself that she urged Boyar. Nevertheless the reins tightened and slackened gently. Boyar swung into his easy lope.
A blue-shirted figure lay half in the road, half in the undergrowth that fringed it, one arm crooked under him and his face prone in the dust; a bulkier mass was stretched wholly within the trail and she recognized him, too. Big Louie's face was upturned, and the explanation of the two rifle reports and the driverless team was here. For Big Louie's hand still clutched the handle of a canvas pail.
They had turned their backs on the river, with its boats and birds and beasts and drum-beating and yelling fellahin, and were now in the silence of the green plain, where the blue-shirted fellahin were working knee-deep in the new crops. The inundation was just over, and the banks of the Nile were as bright as two long velvet ribbons of emerald green.
During this interchange of canine civilities, the landlord was helping out the two men, the companions of the dog. One was round and pudgy, the other lank and scrawny. Both were in knickerbockers, with green hats decorated with cock feathers and edelweiss. The blue-shirted porter carried in the bags and alpenstocks, closing the coffee-room door behind them.
The tents of the workers, some new and white, others soiled and ragged, stretched everywhere; large tents belched smoke and resounded with the ring of hammers on anvil; soldiers stood on guard; men, red-shirted and blue-shirted, swarmed as thick as ants; in a wide hollow a long line of horses, in double row, heads together, pulled hay from a rack as long as the line, and they pulled and snorted and bit at one another; a strong smell of hay and burning wood mingled with the odor of hot coffee and steaming beans; fires blazed on all sides; under another huge tent, or many tents without walls, stretched wooden tables and benches; on the scant sage and rocks and brush, and everywhere upon the tents, lay in a myriad of colors and varieties the lately washed clothes of the toilers; and through the wide street of the camp clattered teams and swearing teamsters, dragging plows with clanking chains and huge scoops turned upside down.
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