That had sobered him. He kept away from the border itself after
that, although the temptation of it drew him. After a few weeks,
when the novelty had worn off, he began to hunger for the clean
little American town across the line. He wanted to talk to some
one. He wanted to boast, to be candid. These Mexicans only
laughed when he bragged to them. But he dared not cross.
There was a high-fenced enclosure behind the "Owl," the segregated
district of the town. There, in tiny one-roomed houses built in
rows like barracks were the girls and women who had drifted to this
jumping-off place of the world. In the daytime they slept or sat
on the narrow, ramshackle porches, untidy, noisy, unspeakably
wretched. At night, however, they blossomed forth in tawdry finery,
in the dancing-space behind the gambling-tables. Some of them were
fixtures. They had drifted there from New Orleans, perhaps, or
southern California, and they lacked the initiative or the money
to get away. But most of them came in, stayed a month or two, found
the place a nightmare, with its shootings and stabbings, and then
disappeared.
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