es odd jobs when she can find
any to do and the missus helps her out now and then, but she ain't the
kind you'd want anything to do with. The missus'll tell you if you ask
her."

"I understand," said Willa quickly. "Is that the Red Dog over there,
where the man is sweeping sawdust out to the road?"

She had crossed to the door and opened it, and her host approached,
peering over her shoulder.

"Yes'm, that's Bill Ryder himself."

"I would like to talk to him," Willa announced. "I want to ask him
some questions about the early days here."

"I'll fetch him for you!" her host offered, recovering hastily from his
astonishment. "You just wait here, he'll be right pleased to come----"

"No, thank you. I will go over, myself." Willa fastened her cloak
with a decisive air. "He came with the first rush, you tell me? Then
he should be able to remember what I want to learn."

She picked her way across the hummocks of frozen mud powdered with snow
in the road, and approached the rotund, jovial-faced little man who was
swinging his worn broom energetically in a cloud of sawdust.

He paused as she neared him, his jaw sagging at the apparition of a
dainty, richly dressed, strange female alone on the street of Topaz.

"Good-morning. You're Mr. Ryder, aren't you?" she smiled.

"That's me, Ma'am." He pulled off his soft-brimmed hat, revealing a
wide expanse of shining pink scalp, fringed with a scanty growth of
grizzled hair.

"The proprietor of the Palace Hotel tells me that you are one of the
oldest inhabitants left, Mr. Ryder, and I wonder if you would mind
telling me something of the people who used to live in Topaz Gulch
years ago. I am trying to locate some lost relatives."

"I'll be glad to tell you anything I can, Ma'am." His round face
quickened with interest. "I keep bachelor house, but if you don't
object to walking through the bar--it's empty now--there's a room back
where we can talk."

He led the way and Willa followed him. Bare and ramshackle as it was,
the sight of the bar and the little tables fronting it brought acutely
to her memory a like room, larger and more resplendent, with
baize-covered tables and flaring oil lamps; a tall, spare figure
inexpressibly dear to her memory replaced for a moment the rotund one
before her and the veil of the past seemed lifted. She was back once
more in the Blue Chip.

The vision was dispelled, however, when she found herself in the little
back room, sc