im with a "Hello, Joe!" as she climbed to his side.

Joe loosened his reins a very little, called sharply to his horses,
and in a whirlwind of dust the buckboard made an amazingly sharp turn
and shot rattling down the road and out toward the mountains in the
south.

"And now what?" grinned Hapgood, maliciously. "Even your country girl
has gone!"

Greek Conniston gazed a moment after the flying buckboard, a vague,
wavering, unreal thing, through the dust of its own making, and,
hiding his disappointment under a shrug, turned to Hapgood.

"Now for a hotel somewhere, if the place has one. Come on, Roger.
We're in for it now, so let's make the best of it."

Carrying his suit-case, he strode off toward the saloon, Roger
following silently. The lanky, sunburned individual in the doorway
watched their approach idly for a moment and then turned his lazy eyes
to a cow and calf trudging past toward the watering-trough.

"Hello, friend!" called Conniston.

The lanky individual drew his eyes from the cow and calf, bestowed a
long look and a fleeting nod upon the two strangers, and turned again
toward the trough, little impressed, little interested in the
Easterners.

"I say!" went on Conniston, brusquely. "Where'll a man get a room
here?"

"Down to the hotel."

"So you do have a hotel? Where is it?"

The lazy individual ducked his head toward the east end of the
street, cast a last look at the cow and calf, and, turning, went back
into the saloon.

"Nice sort of people," grunted Hapgood.

Conniston laughed. "Buck up, Roger," he grinned, his own spurt of
irritation lost in his enjoyment of Hapgood's greater bitterness.
"It's different, anyhow, isn't it? Come on. Let's see what the hotel
looks like."

The hotel was a saloon with a long bar at the front, a little room
just off, containing a couple of tables covered with red oil-cloth.
Beyond were half a dozen six-by-six rooms separated from one another
by partitions rising to within two feet of the unceiled roof. The
proprietor, busy with some local friends in the card-room, saw the two
young men come in and yelled, lustily:

"Mary!"

Mary, a stout and comfortable-looking woman, appeared from the
kitchen, wiping her hands upon her blue apron, and with a sharp glance
at the newcomers bobbed her head at them and said, briefly, "Howdy."

Conniston took off his hat and came into the bar-room. Roger, with a
careless glance at the woman, came in without taking off hi