Hanson was sure of himself always, but now, in this
awakened sense of such power and dominance as he had never known, he
threw back his head and laughed aloud.
"Gosh!" he muttered, "I feel like all I got to do was to reach up and
pull down a few of those stars and use them for poker chips." He exulted
like a sleek and lordly animal in this thrilling vitality, this
imperious and insistent demand for conquest.
Chickasaw Pete's place, as he soon discovered, was no more pretentious
in appearance than the San Gorgonio. It also was a long, low frame
building with some great cottonwood trees before it and a few palms with
their infinite and haunting suggestions of the tropics.
It was with a sense of mounting excitement which still held that strong
element of exultation that Hanson crossed the porch, opened the door and
walked in. He saw before him a long room well lighted with electricity
and with a shining polished floor. The bar ran along one side, and
behind it lounged a short, stout, round-faced man with very black hair
and eyes and a perpetual smile. This was the bar-keeper, known
familiarly as Jimmy. At the rear of the room, covering about half of the
floor, were rows and rows of chairs, occupied by both men and women,
strong, sun-burned looking people in the main, but with the invariable
and unmistakable sprinkling of "lungers" in various stages of recovery.
Hanson saw his friend, the station agent, leaning across the bar talking
to Jimmy, and knew from the interested glances cast in his direction
that he was the topic of conversation.
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