Against his will the vision of a breakfast enthralled him, yet even under this exaltation an instinct of the wariest caution survived.
"I'll go to the one on the lot, I guess. If I went out to the other one I couldn't get in again."
She smiled suddenly, with puzzling lights in her eyes. "Well, of all things ! You want to get in again, do you? Say, wouldn't that beat the hot place a mile? You want to get in again? All right, Old-timer, I'll go out with you and after you've fed I'll cue you on to the lot again."
"Well—if it ain't taking you out of your way." He knew that the girl was somehow humouring him, as if he were a sick child. She knew, and he knew, that the lot was no longer any place for him until he could be rightly there.
"No, c'mon, I'll stay by you." They walked up the street of the Western village. The girl had started at a brisk pace and he was presently breathless.
"I guess I'll have to rest a minute," he said. They were now before the Crystal Palace Hotel and he sat on the steps.
"All in, are you? Well, take it easy."
He was not only all in, but his mind still played with incongruous sentences. He heard himself saying things that must sound foolish.
"I've slept in here a lot," he volunteered. The girl went to look through one of the windows.
"Blankets!" she exclaimed. "Well, you got the makings of a trouper in you, I'll say that. Where else did you sleep?"
"Well, there were two miners had a nice cabin down the street here with bunks and blankets, and they had a fight, and half a kettle of beans and some bread, and one of them shaved and I used his razor, but I haven't shaved since because I only had twenty cents day before yesterday, and anyway they might think I was growing them for a part, the way your father did, but I moved up here when I saw them put the blankets in, and I was careful and put them back every morning. I didn't do any harm, do you think? And I got the rest of the beans they'd thrown into the fireplace, and if
