The "Mojave Bar," on North Main Street of the City of Angels was all but empty. Upon it the lassitude of early afternoon lay heavily. The spider-legged music-racks of the Mexican string orchestra, the empty platform chairs, the deserted side-tables along the pictured wall, the huge cactus scrawled over with pin-etched initials,--all the impedimenta of the saloon seemed to slumber.
The white-coated proprietor, with elbows on the bar, gazed listlessly at a Remington night-scene--a desert nocturne with a shadowy adobe against the blue-black night, a glimmer of lamplight through a doorway, and in the golden pathway a pony and rider and the red flash of pistol shots.
Opposite the bartender, at a table against the wall, sat a young man, clad in cool gray. He smoked a cigarette, and occasionally sipped from a tall glass. He was slender, clean-cut, high-colored, an undeniable patrician. In his mild gray eyes, deep down, gleamed a latent humor, an interior twinkling not apparent to the multitude.
Sweeney Orcutt, the saloon-keeper, noticed this reserve characteristic now for the first time, as the young man turned toward him. Sweeney was a retired plain-clothes man with a record, and a bank account. It was said that he knew every crook from Los Angeles to New York. Be it added, to his credit, that he kept his own counsel--attending to his own business on both sides of the bar.
"Do they ever do those things now?" queried the young man, nodding toward the picture.
Sweeney Orcutt smiled a thin-lipped smile. "Not much. Sometimes in Texas or Mexico. I seen the day when they did."
The young man lazily crossed his legs. "Nice and cool here," he remarked presently.
"I was goin' to say there's a good show over on Spring Street--movin'-pictures of the best ridin' and buckin' and ropin' I seen yet."
"Yes? Is there any one in town who is not working for the movies?"
Again Sweeney Orcutt smiled his thin-lipped smile. "Yes, I guess there is. I might scare up one or two I used to know who is workin' the transients, which ain't exactly workin' _for_ the movies."
"I should like to meet some character who is really doing something in earnest; that is, some cowboy, miner, prospector, teamster,--one of those twenty-mule-team kind, you know,--or any such chap. Why, even the real estate men that have been up to my hotel seem to be acting a part. One expects every minute to see one of them pull a gun and hold up a fellow. No doubt they mean business."