The man fled. The Inger tramped on, to a chant which was growing in his soul:
“Give me Inch. Give me Inch. Give me Inch....”
But by the time he had gained the telegraph office, and the man at the window, after long delay, had told him that identification would be necessary before he could collect his money, the Inger’s mood had changed. He stood before the window and broke into a roar of laughter.
“Identify me!” he said. “Me! Why, man, I’m Inger. I own the Flag-pole mine. I just got here, from Inch, Balboa County. You might as well try to identify the West coast. Look at me, you fool!”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Inger,” said the man, respectfully. “You’ll have to bring somebody here who knows you. A resident.”
“There ain’t a resident of nothing this side the Rockies that ever laid eyes to me,” said the Inger. “You guess twice.”
“Haven’t you got your name on something about you?” he said softly.
The Inger thought. He rarely had a letter, he never carried one. He had never in his life owned a business card or an embroidered initial. Suddenly his face cleared.
“You bet!” he cried, and drew his six-shooter, which the men at the mines had given him, and levelled it through the bars.
“There’s my name on the handle,” he said. “Want I should fire, just to prove it’s mine?”
The man hesitated, glanced once about the office, looked in the Inger’s eyes,—and risked his job.
“That’ll be sufficient,” said he. “But if you’ll allow me, you’d best cover that thing up.”
“I donno,” said the Inger, reflectively, “but I’d best shoot my way down State Street. I don’t seem to get along very fast any other way.”
He had one more visit to make. This was to a railway ticket office, where he deliberately made a purchase and took away a time-card. Then he returned to the employment office.
There he faced a curious sight. The outer room was small and squalid with its bare, dirty floor, its discolored walls, the dusty, curtainless panes of its one window which looked in on a dingy court. About the edge of the room, either seated on deal benches without backs, or standing by the wall, were perhaps twenty women. They were old, they were young, they were relaxed and hopeless, or tense and strained—but the most of them were middle-aged and shabby and utterly negligible. They had not the character of the defeated or the ill or the wretched. They were simply drained of life, and were living. Occasionally an inner door opened and a man’s voice called “Next.” Few of the women talked. One or two of them slept. The window was closed and the air was intolerable.