Iowa. It was a board platform, and the boy walked cautiously, lifting his
bare feet and putting them down with extreme deliberateness on the hot,
dry, cracked planks. Under one arm he carried a bundle of newspapers. A
long black cigar was in his hand.

In front of the station he stopped; and Jerry Donlin, the baggage-man,
seeing the cigar in his hand, laughed, and slowly drew the side of his
face up into a laboured wink.

"What is the game to-night, Sam?" he asked.

Sam stepped to the baggage-room door, handed him the cigar, and began
giving directions, pointing into the baggage-room, intent and business-
like in the face of the Irishman's laughter. Then, turning, he walked
across the station platform to the main street of the town, his eyes bent
on the ends of his fingers on which he was making computations with his
thumb. Jerry looked after him, grinning so that his red gums made a splash
of colour on his bearded face. A gleam of paternal pride lit his eyes and
he shook his head and muttered admiringly. Then, lighting the cigar, he
went down the platform to where a wrapped bundle of newspapers lay against
the building, under the window of the telegraph office, and taking it in
his arm disappeared, still grinning, into the baggage-room.

Sam McPherson walked down Main Street, past the shoe store, the bakery,
and the candy store kept by Penny Hughes, toward a group lounging at the
front of Geiger's drug store. Before the door of the shoe store he paused
a moment, and taking a small note-book from his pocket ran his finger down
the pages, then shaking his head continued on his way, again absorbed in
doing sums on his fingers.