' That is the old original
first 'Shimmie' dance--with whiskers two foot long--"
"The original what?"
"Shimmie! _Shimmie!_ Say, honest to God, don't you know--?" And with his
shoulders he made a wriggling gesture in appeal to my wits, the crudest
burlesque, it seemed, of a divinely abominable gesture in my
memory.--"That?" he queried. "Eh?"
"Shimmie," I echoed, and, my mind skipping back: "_Shemdance! Shame
Dance!_--I see!"
"Why?" he demanded, intrigued by my preoccupation.
"Nothing. It just reminded me of something."
Then he lifted a hand and smote himself on the thigh. "Me, too! By
jinks! Say, I'd almost forgot that."
He hitched his chair upon me; held me down with a forefinger.
"Listen. That was funny. It was one night--last fall. It was just after
Number Seventeen had pulled out, westbound, about one-forty in the
morning. There wasn't anything else till six-one. Them are always the
hardest hours. A fellow's got to stay awake, see, and nothin' to keep
him--unless maybe a coyote howlin' a mile off, or maybe a bum knockin'
around among the box cars on the sidin', or, if it's cold, the stove to
tend. That's all. Unless you put a record on the old phonograph and hit
'er up a few minutes now and then. Dead? Say, boy!"
"Well, this night it was a bum.
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