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A mile ahead I came to a tumbledown roadhouse, with quite a crowd of loud-voiced men standing around, who evidently had been indulging in the fiery aguardiente sold there. Like the Levite and priest, I passed by on the other side, giving the place a wide berth. Soon after I entered a town or hamlet of a dozen houses.
"Fat chance," he exploded as soon as he got within hearing. "Snow in those clouds tons of it. H'm! And wind. Wow! We're in for an honest-to-God blizzard, sure as you're a foot high." Swiftwater was worried. He would have liked to turn and run for it. But the last roadhouse was twenty-seven miles back. If the blizzard came howling down the slope they would have a sweet time of it reaching safety.
Sheba hoped there would be one, not, of course, a really, truly blizzard such as Macdonald had told her about, but the tail of a make-believe one, enough to send her glowing with exhilaration into the roadhouse with the happy sense of an adventure achieved. The girl had got out to relieve the horses, and as her young, lissom body took the hill scattering flakes of snow were already flying.
I wanted you to to fall for me hard.... That bunch of sapheads have spoiled me, I'll say. Daren, I'm sick of them. All they want to do is mush. I like tennis, riding, golf. I want to do things. But it's too hot, or this, or that. Yet they'll break their necks to carry a girl off to some roadhouse, and dance dance till you're melted. Then they stop along the river to go bathing. I've been twice.
Two types of inns thus came quickly into existence: the tavern entertained the stagecoach traffic, while the democratic roadhouse served the established lines of Conestogas, freighters, and all other vehicles which poured from every town, village, and hamlet upon the great thoroughfare leading to the metropolis on the Delaware.
"Say, come to think of it, there's an elegant little roadhouse a ways back in the country here, Tim. About half an hour there and back, I judge." Tim grunted uneasily. "Think it's safe?" he queried. "If Jeff got on to us " "Shucks! What could he do? We ain't his hired hands." "The boss, though suppose Jeff told him?" "He wouldn't, and how's he goin' to find out, anyhow?
The old native had lost his first wife and married another and younger one, the pretty woman spoken of by wide-mouthed Curley in the Keewalik roadhouse some days before. She was a full blooded Eskimo, as was the shaman, but had enjoyed the advantages of travel, having visited in the Nome country; remaining for a time also in the mission house at Kotzebue.
"The society chap? Nothing much except that he don't do much business on the street but is supposed to be pretty lucky at poker and bridge. But he runs with the crowd the police can't or don't raid. I've never seen or heard of him anywhere he shouldn't be except with swell slumming or roadhouse parties. He's never interested me.
He watched the men at work upon their various claims, and noted how meagre was their success. They toiled like slaves, lured on by the hope of a rich strike that never came. The principal place of meeting was the roadhouse, where "Shorty" Bill held sway. He lodged men, served meals, and conducted a bar. He was a good-hearted fellow, rough and uncouth, but well liked by all, and a genial companion.
"I'll tell you what we'll do," he said. "We won't go to any of the old places. I've found a new roadhouse in the country that's respectable enough to suit anybody. We'll go out to Schwitter's and get some dinner. I'll promise to get you back early. How's that?" In the end she gave in. And on the way out he lived up to the letter of their agreement.
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