AtD translation: the ladies who work on the line

[Monte Davis]

Jamie's suggestion sounds right to me because of the grouping with whiskey
and gambling, although I've never heard "on the line" in connection with
what Western pulps and 'Gunsmoke' delicately called "dance-hall girls."

I Googled Cripple Creek's history of gold mining and labor conflict,
thinking there might have been some stage of processing with workers lined
up along an ore sluice or conveyor belt, but no luck there.

On Fri, Jan 19, 2018 at 9:05 AM, Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I'm thinking the kitchen in a restaurant, as in "line cook", but I'm not
> sure if there's any other meaning I'm not aware of.
>
>
> On Fri, Jan 19, 2018 at 8:34 AM, Jamie McKittrick <jamiemckit at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> At risk? Soldiers lay their lives on the line. Women of certain
>> professions lay their asses on the line with each new client. Oftentimes
>> literally. It may be referring to production lines but they came later on.
>>
>> On 19 January 2018 at 08:39, Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> P86.3-14   In the broken and soon-enough-interrupted dreams close to
>>> dawn in particular, Webb would find himself standing at some divide, facing
>>> west into a great flow of promise, something like wind, something
>>> like light, free of the damaged hopes and pestilent smoke east of
>>> here—sacrificial smoke, maybe, but not ascending to Heaven, only high
>>> enough to be breathed in, to sicken and cut short countless lives, to
>>> change the color of the daylight and deny to walkers of the night the stars
>>> they remembered from younger times. He would wake to the day and its dread.
>>> The trail back to that high place and the luminous promise did not run by
>>> way of Cripple, though Cripple would have to serve, hopes corroded to
>>> fragments—overnight whiskey, daughters of slaves, rigged faro games, the
>>> ladies who work on the line.
>>>
>>> What does "work on the line" mean here?
>>>
>>>
>>
>
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