Under Handicap | Page 2

the rosy
face of a wax doll.
"Seeing that you have made the same remark seventeen times since
breakfast," Greek replied, when he had set his empty glass back upon
the tray, "I didn't know that an answer was needed."
"Well, it's so," the pale youth maintained, irritably.
Greek nodded wearily and selected a cigarette from a silver
monogrammed case. The cigarettes themselves were monogrammed,
each one bearing a delicately executed W. C. His companion reached
out a shapely hand for the case, at the same time regarding his empty
glass.
"Suppose we have another, eh?"
Again Greek nodded. The lavender young man reached the button, and
a bell tinkled in the little buffet at the far end of the car. The negro
lazily polishing a glass put it down, glanced at the indicator, and
hastened to put glasses and bottles upon a tray.
"The same, suh?" he asked, coming to the table and addressing Greek.
It was the pale young man who assured him that it was to be the same,
but it was Greek who threw a dollar bill upon the tray.

"Thank you, suh. Thank you." The negro bobbed as he made the proper
change--and returned it to his own pocket.
Greek appeared not to have seen him or heard. He poured his own
drink and shoved the bottles toward his friend, who helped himself with
skilful celerity.
"Suppose the old gent will hold out long this time, Greek?" came the
query, after a swallow of the whisky and seltzer, a shrewd look in the
pale eyes.
Greek laughed carelessly.
"I guess we'll have time to see a good deal of San Francisco before he
caves in. The old man put what he had to say in words of one syllable.
But we won't worry about that until we get there."
"Did he shell out at all?"
"He didn't quite give me carte blanche," retorted Greek, grinning. "A
ticket to ride as far as I wanted to, and five hundred in the long green.
And it's going rather fast, Roger, my boy."
"And my tickets came out of the five hundred?"
Greek nodded.
"It's devilish the way my luck's gone lately," grumbled Roger. "I don't
know when I can ever pay--"
Greek put up his hand swiftly.
"You don't pay at all," he said, emphatically. "This is my treat. It was
mighty decent of you to drop everything and come along with me into
this d----d exile. And," he finished, easily, "I'll have more money than
I'll know what to do with when the old man gets soft-hearted again."
"He's d----d hard on you, Greek. He's got more--"

"Oh, I don't know." Greek laughed again. "He's a good sort, and we get
along first rate together. Only he's got some infernally uncomfortable
ideas about a man going to work and doing something for himself in
this little old vale of tears. He shaves himself five times out of six, and
I've seen him black his own boots!" He chuckled amusedly. "Just to
show people he can, you know."
Roger shook his head and applied himself to his glass, failing to see the
humor of the thing. And while the bigger man continued to muse with
twinkling eyes over the idiosyncrasies of an enormously wealthy but at
the same time enormously hard-headed father, with old-fashioned ideas
of the dignity of labor, Roger sat frowning into his glass.
The silence, into which the click of the rails below had entered so
persistently as to become a part of it rather than to disturb it, was
broken at last by the clamorous screaming of the engine. The train was
slackening its speed. Greek flipped up the shade and looked out.
"Another one of those toy villages," he called over his shoulder. "Who
in the devil would want to get off here?"
Roger sank a trifle deeper into his chair, indicating no interest. The fat
man had dropped his newspaper to the floor and was leaning out the
window.
"Great country, ain't it?" he called to Greek.
"Yes, it certainly ain't! What gets me is, why do people live in a place
like this? Are they all crazy?"
The train now was jerking and bumping to a standstill. Sixty yards
away was a little, bluish-gray frame building, by far the most
pretentious of the clutter of shacks, flaunting the legend, "Prairie City."
Beyond the station was the to-be-expected general store and post-office.
A bit farther on a saloon. Beyond that another, and then straggling at
intervals a dozen rough, rambling, one-storied board houses. For miles
in all directions the desert stretched dry and barren. The faces of
women and children peered out of windows, the forms of roughly

garbed men lounged in the doorways of the store and the saloons. All
the denizens of