Part 39 (2/2)
”Yes, thank you.” The girl nodded, smiling. Then her face sobered.
”I wonder if you could tell me--may I ask how long you have been here in Topaz Gulch?”
”Five years, Ma'am,” he returned promptly. ”For a boom town that didn't grow as was expected, nor yet peter out entirely, Topaz is holding her own and business ain't so bad; besides, the air is good for the missus. That's why we come in the first place.”
The girl had paused at the window, gazing up the western slope.
”That is the Yellow Streak?”
”Yes'm, that's the mine. Folks thought at first that she was going to pan out another bonanza, I guess, but now she's just about profitable enough to make it worth while to keep her going. Great town, this must have been when she was first opened up.”
The girl scarcely heard. She was thinking of the weary, consumptive young time-keeper who had struggled up that gray slope with daily weakening tread and of the girl who, with her baby in her arms, watched him perhaps from the door of one of those dilapidated, weather-worn shacks upon which she herself now gazed. With blurred eyes, the erstwhile Willa Murdaugh turned to her informant.
”Have there been many changes since you came?” she asked.
”Well, no,” he considered. ”Once in a while some hustler from the Coast lands here and runs up a concrete store, but usually he don't stay long; there ain't enough doing. The population's always s.h.i.+fting; there's been a whole new outfit up at the mine since we come, but everything seems to go on just the same, so you couldn't rightly call it much of a change. The moving-picture houses are about all that's marked any difference in things here, I guess.”
”I wonder if there is anyone left in the town who was here fifteen years ago.” Willa spoke with ill-concealed eagerness. ”Who is the oldest inhabitant you know of?”
The proprietor looked his surprise.
”Well,” he began at last, ”there's Bill Ryder; he come in with the first rush, they tell me, and he still runs the Red Dog Cafe. Then there's Pete Haines, a half-witted old cuss--begging your pardon, Ma'am!--that's got enough dust cached somewhere to keep himself drunk perpetual; and the Widow Atkinson, and Big Olaf, and--and Klondike Kate.”
He hesitated at the last name, and a brick-red flush suffused his stolid face, but Willa paid no heed.
”Who are they?”
”The Widow Atkinson runs the eating-house for miners at the end of the street; hard-sh.e.l.l temperance, she is, and they say Atkinson used to wait on table with her ap.r.o.n tied round him and da.s.sent even smoke indoors.” He paused. ”Big Olaf is a Swede who got hurt in the mine years ago and the company gives him an annuity. Kind of cracked he is, too, but harmless. You see, Ma'am, when the big boom died down gradual and the town settled into a one-horse gait, the young folks naturally pushed on to the next strike that promised a fortune, and the old ones drifted back to where they come from.”
”And Klondike Kate; who is she?” Willa persisted.
Her host s.h.i.+fted from one foot to the other in an agony of embarra.s.sment.
”She--she's just a woman that stays on here because there ain't any other place for her to go, Ma'am. She does 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.
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