By Right of Purchase by Harold Bindloss — Read

There were two breakfasts served in the Occidental Hotel, which, dilapidated and weather-scarred, stands at the foot of the unpaved street of a desolate little town beside the railroad track. Most men commence their work early in the prairie country, so the first meal was laid at six; but there was another from eight to nine when a train came in. This was a somewhat unusual concession to the needs of the few passengers who alighted there, because throughout most of the Northwest no self-respecting hotel cook would prepare a meal out of the fixed hours, not even for a cabinet minister or a railroad director. Nor would the proprietor vary a dish, for in his estimation what suffices the plainsman is quite good enough for anybody else.

The table had just been cleared when a small and select company of men who had nothing in particular to do pulled their chairs up to the stove, on which as many of them as could find room put their feet. It had not been lighted that morning, or black-leaded for many days, but habit was strong in them. There are, even in countries where most men are hard workers, a few who spend their lives lounging on hotel verandahs and sitting round the stove. Nobody unused to it would, in all probability, have cared to linger there, for there are few places of entertainment so wholly desolate and uninviting as the general room of the average prairie hotel.