Argosy, Vol. 118, No. 4 — page 18: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

488 section began to ship stock from the new station, rather than drive to Red Rock— another shipping point five hundred miles east on the same railroad. 3 From the first it became evident that Wil- lets would not be a boom town. It grew slowly and steadily until its fame began to trickle through to the outside world— though it was a cattle town in the begin- ning, and a cattle town it would remain all its days. Therefore, because of its slow growth, there were old buildings in Willets. The frame station bore an aged appearance. Its roof sagged in the center, its walls were bulging with weakness. But it stood de- fiantly flaunting its crimson paint above the wooden platform, a hardy pioneer among the moderns. Business. had strayed from the railroad track; it had left the station, the freight- house, the company corral, and some open sheds, to establish its enterprises one block southward. There, fringing a wide, un- paved street that ran east and west, parallel with the gleaming steel rails, business reared its citadels. Willets buildings were not imposing. One-story frames predominated, with here and there a two-storied structure, or a brick aristocrat seeming to call attention to its substantial solidity. Willets had plenty of space in which to grow, and the location of the buildings on their sites seemed to indicate that their builders appreciated the fact that there was no need for crowding. Between each build- ing was space—space suggestive of the un- ending plains that surrounued the strag- gling town. Willets sat, serene in its space and soli- tude, unhurried, uncramped, sprawling over a stretch of grass level—a dingy, dirty, inglorious Willets, shamed by its fringe of tin cans, empty bottles, and other refuse— and by the clean sweep of sand and sage and grass that stretched to its very doors. For Willets was man-made. From the second story of a brick build- ing that stood on the southern side of the street, facing the station, Gary Warden could look past the red station into the empty corrals beside the railread track. Jim THE ARGOSY. Lefingwell, Warden’s predecessor, had usu- ally smiled when he saw the corral comfort- ably filled with steers. But Gary Warden smiled because the corral was empty. Warden was standing beside a flat-tepped desk at one of his office windows. Warden was big, though not massive. He seemed to have the frame of a tall, slender man, and had he stayed slender his frame would have carried his flesh gracefully. But Warden had lived well, denying himself nothing, and the flesh which had been added had collected in flabby bunches, drooping his shoulders, sagging his jaws, swelling the back of his neck. And yet Warden was not old; he had told some new-made friends in Willets that he was thirty-five. But he looked older, for a certain blasé sophistication that gleamed from his eyes and sat on the curves of his lips did much to create the impression of age: Warden dressed well. He was coatless, but he wore a shirt of some soft, striped material, with a loose, comfortable-looking collar and neat bow tie. His hair was short, with bristles in the roll of fat at the back of his neck;~while at his forehead it was punctiliously parted, and plastered down with exactness. Warden was not alone. At another win- dow, her elbows on the sill, her hands crossed, her chin resting on the knuckles of the upper one, sat a woman. She was young, slender, lissom. There was grace in every line of her, and witchery in the eyes that watched Warden with a sidelong gaze. She, too, was hatless, seem- ingly conscious of the beauty of her hair, which was looped and twisted into glistening strands that fell over her temples and the back of her neck. As she watched Warden, who was smiling *at the empty corral, she withdrew her el- bows from the window-sill, twisted around, so that she faced Warden, and idly twirled the felt hat that she had taken from her lap. “Does something please you, Gary?” she asked with slight, bantering emphasis. Warden’s-smile broadened. “ Well, I’m not exactly displeased.” “With Willets—and the rest of it?” im (Cl Q) NOOLK