-racks of the Mexican string orchestra, the empty
platform chairs, the deserted side-tables along the pictured wall, the
huge cactus scrawled over with pin-etched initials,--all the impedimenta
of the saloon seemed to slumber.

The white-coated proprietor, with elbows on the bar, gazed listlessly at
a Remington night-scene--a desert nocturne with a shadowy adobe against
the blue-black night, a glimmer of lamplight through a doorway, and in
the golden pathway a pony and rider and the red flash of pistol shots.

Opposite the bartender, at a table against the wall, sat a young man,
clad in cool gray. He smoked a cigarette, and occasionally sipped from a
tall glass. He was slender, clean-cut, high-colored, an undeniable
patrician. In his mild gray eyes, deep down, gleamed a latent humor, an
interior twinkling not apparent to the multitude.

Sweeney Orcutt, the saloon-keeper, noticed this reserve characteristic
now for the first time, as the young man turned toward him. Sweeney was
a retired plain-clothes man with a record, and a bank account. It was
said that he knew every crook from Los Angeles to New York. Be it added,
to his credit, that he kept his own counsel--attending to his own
business on both sides of the bar.

"Do they ever do those things now?" queried the young man, nodding
toward the picture.

Sweeney Orcutt smiled a thin-lipped smile. "Not much. Sometimes in Texas
or Mexico. I seen the day when they did."

The young man lazily crossed his legs. "Nice and cool here," he remarked
presently.

"Been in town long?" asked Sweeney.

"No, only a few days."

"I was goin' to say there's a good show over on Spring
Street--movin'-pictures of the best ridin' and buckin' and ropin' I seen
yet."

"Yes? Is there any one in town who is not working for the movies?"

Again Sweeney Orcutt smiled his thin-lipped smile. "Yes, I guess there
is. I might scare up one or two I used to know who is workin' the
transients, which ain't exactly workin' _for_ the movies."

"I should like to meet some character who is really doing something in
earnest; that is, some cowboy, miner, prospector, teamster,--one of
those twenty-mule-team kind, you know,--or any such chap. Why, even the
real estate men that have been up to my hotel seem to be acting a part.
One expects every minute to see one of them pull a gun and hold up a
fellow. No doubt they mean business."

"Bank on that," said Orcutt dryly.

"You see," continued the young