ys after the Fourth, Lance sprawled his big body on a
long seat, his head joggling against the dusty window, his mind
sleepily recalling, round by round, a certain prize fight that had
held him in Reno over the Fourth and had cost him some money and much
disgust. The clicking of the car trucks directly underneath, the
whirring of the electric fan over his head, the reek of tobacco smoke
seemed to him to last for hours, seemed likely to go on forever. Above
it all, rising stridently now and then in a disagreeable monotone, the
harsh, faintly snarling voice of a man on the opposite seat blended
unpleasantly with his dozing discomfort. For a long time the man had
been talking, and Lance had been aware of a grating quality of the
voice, that yet seemed humorous in its utterances, since his two
listeners laughed frequently and made brief, profane comment that
encouraged the talker to go on. Finally, as he slowly returned from
the hazy borderland of slumber, Lance became indifferently aware of
the man's words.

From under the peak of his plaid traveling cap Lance lifted his
eyelids the length of his black lashes, measured the men with a
half-minute survey and closed his eyes again. The face matched the
voice. A harsh face, with bold blue eyes, black eyebrows that met over
his nose, a mouth slightly prominent, hard and tilted downward at the
corners. Over the harshness like a veil was spread a sardonic kind of
humor that gave attraction to the man's personality. In the monotone
of his voice was threaded a certain dry wit that gave point to his
observations. He was an automobile salesman, it appeared, and his
headquarters were in Ogden, and he was going through to Shoshone on
business connected with a delayed shipment of cars. But he was
talking, when Lance first awoke to his monologue, of the sagebrush
country through which the fast mail was reeling drunkenly, making up
time that had been lost because of a washout that had held the train
for an hour while two section crews sweated over a broken culvert.

"--And by gosh! the funniest thing I ever saw happened right up here
in a stretch of country they call the Black Rim. If I was a story
writer, I sure would write it up. Talk about the West being
tame!--why, I can take you right now, within a few hours' ride, to
where men ride with guns on 'em just as much as they wear their pants.
Only reason they ain't all killed off, I reckon, is because they
_all_ pack guns.

"Hard-boil