Читать книгу Hands Up! онлайн

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Everybody was very decent to me when I went in. The hotel proprietor offered me a free drink before I had booked a room; the telegraph operator (a thin, wiry little Scotsman with a thin, wiry moustache, stained with tobacco juice) introduced himself to me when, after a wash, I came out again and walked on the deserted balcony, introduced himself and begged me to come and drink with him all in one breath. The store-keeper, when I stepped over past his door and caught his eye, gave me a nod and said "How-do" abruptly, but friendly enough; he looked an abrupt man, a philosophic dry old stick, very like pictures of Uncle Sam. The section men, when they came over to the hotel in the evening, stood near me as if to give me a chance to talk, if I wished to; and, when I did not speak, as I had read that in the West attempts at making acquaintance quickly are sometimes resented, their boss said: "Perhaps the gentleman setting there would care for a game?"

I turned my head.

"Good evening, sir," he said. "Kind of lonesome for a stranger in this town. Would you care for a game of chequers?"