It was that last sound which almost turned Neale away from the door.
He shunned women. But this place fascinated him. He went in under
the flaming lamps.
The place was crowded--a huge tent stretched over a framework of
wood, and it was full of people, din, smoke, movement. The floor was
good planking covered with sand. Walking was possible only round the
narrow aisles between groups at tables.
Neale's sauntering brought him to the bar. It had to him a familiar
look, and afterward he learned that it had been brought complete
from St. Louis, where he had seen it in a saloon. It seemed a huge,
glittering, magnificent monstrosity in that coarse, bare setting.
Wide mirrors, glistening bottles, paintings of nude women, row after
row of polished glasses, a brawny, villainous barkeeper, with three
attendants, all working fast, a line of rough, hoarse men five deep
before the counter--all these things constituted a scene that had
the aspects of a city and yet was redolent with an atmosphere no
city ever knew. The drinkers were not all rough men. There were
elegant black-hatted, frock-coated men of leisure in that line--not
directors and commissioners and traveling guests of the U. P. R.,
but gentlemen of chance. Gamblers!
The band now began a different strain of dance music.
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