minated in the kitchen, where an astonishingly tall stovepipe projected from the comb.
On the front ridgepole a broad-spreading pair of elk antlers rode, a sign once as familiar over the doors of refreshment places in the inter-mountain country as the polished steer horns were in mid-western saloons. Dispensers of ardent liquors always have appeared to be peculiarly attached to horns.
Business was dull at the road-ranch that evening; there was not a horse but Graball under the long shed; no guest but his master in the bar. The rain had come with furious outburst, lashing the windows with streams, the young quaking-asp trees set in front of the house bending like bows before the wind. By the time Rawlins' supper had been thrown together by the hostess and his plate and cutlery laid out by Nadine on one end of the long table, the vicious burst off storm had passed.
This table shared the main room of the establishment with the well-appointed bar, the visible appointments of which were seven bottles of varying size and color, one lemon, and a pistol. The bar, being the institution first under requisition by visitors, and last in the thoughts and desires of departing guests, was near the door, a long stretch of floor between it and the dining-table. In this intervening space were chairs and round-topped card tables, a square in the center marking where the stove, lately removed, had stood. The room was lighted lugubriously by a lamp swinging from the ceiling.
Rawlins was just putting his feet under the table when somebody rode into the yard, calling the host out
