Under Handicap | Page 6

the end, seeing
the futility of trying to reason with a man who only laughed, and seeing
further the disadvantage of being cut off from his source of easy money,
Roger gave in, growling. So when the train drew into Indian Creek that
afternoon there were three people who got down from it.
CHAPTER II
Indian Creek stood lonely and isolated in the flat, treeless, sun-smitten
desert. Only in the south was the unbroken flatness relieved by a
low-lying ridge of barren brown hills, their sides cut as by erosion into
steep, stratified cliffs. Even these bleak hills looked to be twenty miles
away, and were in reality fifty. Beyond them, softened and blurred by
the distance, was a blue-gray line where the mountains were.
"Of all the wretched holes in the world!" fumed Hapgood.
But Conniston didn't hear him. The girl had stepped down from the
train, and, without casting a glance behind her, walked swiftly across
the wriggling thing which stood for a street in Indian Creek. There was
a saloon with a long hitching-pole in front of it, to which a couple of
saddle-horses were tied, and a buckboard with two fretting
two-year-olds in dust-covered harness. A man, a swarthy half-breed,
with hair and eyes and long, pointed mustaches of inky blackness, was
on the seat, handling the jerking reins. He called a soft "_Adios,
compadre_" to the man lounging in the doorway, and swung his colts
out into the road, making a sweeping half-circle, bringing them to a
restless halt, pawing and fighting their bits, at the girl's side. While with
one brown hand he held them back, with the other he swept off his
wide, black hat.

"How do, Mess!" he cried, softly, his teeth flashing a white greeting.
She answered him with a "Hello, Joe!" as she climbed to his side.
Joe loosened his reins a very little, called sharply to his horses, and in a
whirlwind of dust the buckboard made an amazingly sharp turn and
shot rattling down the road and out toward the mountains in the south.
"And now what?" grinned Hapgood, maliciously. "Even your country
girl has gone!"
Greek Conniston gazed a moment after the flying buckboard, a vague,
wavering, unreal thing, through the dust of its own making, and, hiding
his disappointment under a shrug, turned to Hapgood.
"Now for a hotel somewhere, if the place has one. Come on, Roger.
We're in for it now, so let's make the best of it."
Carrying his suit-case, he strode off toward the saloon, Roger following
silently. The lanky, sunburned individual in the doorway watched their
approach idly for a moment and then turned his lazy eyes to a cow and
calf trudging past toward the watering-trough.
"Hello, friend!" called Conniston.
The lanky individual drew his eyes from the cow and calf, bestowed a
long look and a fleeting nod upon the two strangers, and turned again
toward the trough, little impressed, little interested in the Easterners.
"I say!" went on Conniston, brusquely. "Where'll a man get a room
here?"
"Down to the hotel."
"So you do have a hotel? Where is it?"
The lazy individual ducked his head toward the east end of the street,
cast a last look at the cow and calf, and, turning, went back into the
saloon.

"Nice sort of people," grunted Hapgood.
Conniston laughed. "Buck up, Roger," he grinned, his own spurt of
irritation lost in his enjoyment of Hapgood's greater bitterness. "It's
different, anyhow, isn't it? Come on. Let's see what the hotel looks
like."
The hotel was a saloon with a long bar at the front, a little room just off,
containing a couple of tables covered with red oil-cloth. Beyond were
half a dozen six-by-six rooms separated from one another by partitions
rising to within two feet of the unceiled roof. The proprietor, busy with
some local friends in the card-room, saw the two young men come in
and yelled, lustily:
"Mary!"
Mary, a stout and comfortable-looking woman, appeared from the
kitchen, wiping her hands upon her blue apron, and with a sharp glance
at the newcomers bobbed her head at them and said, briefly, "Howdy."
Conniston took off his hat and came into the bar-room. Roger, with a
careless glance at the woman, came in without taking off his hat and
dropped into one of the rickety chairs against the wall. And there he sat
until Conniston had negotiated for two rooms for the night. Then he got
jerkily to his feet and stalked after his friend and their hostess to the
back of the house. A moment later he and Conniston, left alone, sat
upon their two beds and stared at each other through the doorway
connecting their rooms. Conniston studied the bare floors, the bare
walls of rough, unplaned twelve-inch boards