it?" asked
Schwegel.

"Did I know Heinrich Strauss?" repeated Curly, affectionately. "Why,
say, 'Bo, I wish I had a dollar for every game of pinochle me and
Heine has played on Sunday afternoons."

More beer and a second plate of steaming food was set before the
diplomat. And then Curly, knowing to a fluid-drachm how far a "con"
game would go, shuffled out into the unpromising street.

And now he began to perceive the inconveniences of this stony Southern
town. There was none of the outdoor gaiety and brilliancy and music
that provided distraction even to the poorest in the cities of the
North. Here, even so early, the gloomy, rock-walled houses were closed
and barred against the murky dampness of the night. The streets were
mere fissures through which flowed grey wreaths of river mist. As
he walked he heard laughter and the chink of coin and chips behind
darkened windows, and music coming from every chink of wood and stone.
But the diversions were selfish; the day of popular pastimes had not
yet come to San Antonio.

But at length Curly, as he strayed, turned the sharp angle of another
lost street and came upon a rollicking band of stockmen from the
outlying ranches celebrating in the open in front of an ancient
wooden hotel. One great roisterer from the sheep country who had just
instigated a movement toward the bar, swept Curly in like a stray goat
with the rest of his flock. The princes of kine and wool hailed him as
a new zoological discovery, and uproariously strove to preserve him in
the diluted alcohol of their compliments and regards.

An hour afterward Curly staggered from the hotel barroom dismissed by
his fickle friends, whose interest in him had subsided as quickly as
it had risen. Full--stoked with alcoholic fuel and cargoed with food,
the only question remaining to disturb him was that of shelter and
bed.

A drizzling, cold Texas rain had begun to fall--an endless, lazy,
unintermittent downfall that lowered the spirits of men and raised a
reluctant steam from the warm stones of the streets and houses. Thus
comes the "norther" [60] dousing gentle spring and amiable autumn with
the chilling salutes and adieux of coming and departing winter.

[FOOTNOTE 60: norther--a Texas "blue norther" is a cold front.
Its arrival is heralded by a blue-black sky to the
north, followed by rain and thunderstorms. The
temperature can fall 20-40 degrees in