These were the travelers, the business people, the
stragglers, the nondescripts, the parasites, the criminals, the
desperadoes, and the idlers--all who must by hook or crook live off
the builders.
Neale was conscious of a sudden exhilaration. The spirit was still
in him. After all, his defeated ambition counted for nothing in the
great sum of this work. How many had failed! He thought of the
nameless graves already dotting the slopes along the line and
already forgotten. It would be something to live through the heyday
of Benton.
Under a sign, "Hotel," he entered a door in a clapboard house. The
place was as crude as an unfinished barn. Paying in advance for
lodgings, he went to the room shown him--a stall with a door and a
bar, a cot and a bench, a bowl and a pitcher. Through cracks he
could see out over an uneven stretch of tents and houses. Toward the
edge of town stood a long string of small tents and several huge
ones, which might have been the soldiers' quarters.
Neale went out in search of a meal and entered the first restaurant.
It was merely a canvas house stretched over poles, with compartments
at the back. High wooden benches served as tables, low benches as
seats. The floor was sand. At one table sat a Mexican, an Irishman,
and a Negro. The Irishman was drunk.
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