VI

ON THE WING OF OCCASIONS

From the time when it was heralded in the mammoth New Year’s edition of The Plainsman as “the newest, the finest, and the most luxurious hostelry west of the Missouri River,” the Inter-Mountain Hotel, in the Sage-brush capital, had been the acceptable gathering-place of the clans, industrial, promoting, or political.

Anticipating this patronage, Clarkson, its bonanza-king builder and owner, had amended the architect’s plans to make them include a convention-hall, committee-rooms, and a complete floor of suites with private dining-rooms.  Past this, the amended plans doubled the floor space of the lobby—­debating-ground dear to the heart of the country delegate—­and particular pains had been taken to make this semi-public forum, where the burning question of the moment could be caucussed and the shaky partisan resworn to fealty, attractive and home-like; the plainly tiled floor, leather-covered lounging-chairs, and numerous and convenient cuspidors lending an air of democratic comfort which was somehow missing in the resplendent, bemirrored, onyx-plated bar, blazing with its cut glass and polished mahogany.

After the solid costliness of Wartrace Hall and the thirty-mile spin in a high-powered gentleman’s roadster, which was only one of the three high-priced motor-carriages in the Wartrace garage, Evan Blount was not surprised to learn that his father was registered in permanence for one of the private dining-room suites at the Inter-Mountain.  It was amply evident that the simple life which had been the rule of the “Circle-Bar” ranch household had become a thing of the past; and though he charged the new order of things to the ambition of his father’s wife, he could hardly cavil at it, since he was himself a sharer in the comforts and luxuries.

For the first few days after the father and son had gone into bachelor quarters at the Inter-Mountain, the returned exile was left almost wholly to his own devices.  Beyond giving him a good many introductions, as the opportunities for them offered in the stirring life of the hotel, his father made few demands upon him, and they were together only at luncheon and dinner, the midday meal being usually served in their suite, while for the dinner they met by appointment in the hotel cafe.

Notwithstanding this hospitable neglect on the part of his father, Evan Blount suffered no lack of the social opportunities.  Gantry was back, and, in addition to a most ready availability as a social sponsor, the traffic manager was both able and willing.  Almost before he had time to realize it, Blount had been put in touch with the busy, breezy life of the Western city, was exchanging nods or hand-shakings with more people than he had ever known in Cambridge or Boston, and was receiving more invitations than he could possibly accept.

“Pretty good old town, isn’t it?” laughed Gantry one day, when he had tolled Blount away from the Inter-Mountain luncheon to share a table with him in the Railway Club.  “Getting so you feel a little more at home with us?”