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However, if you feel like kicking about this room, you ought to see some of the others mine, for instance, or the one Timmons put that other woman in." "Oh, yes," she said, finding a seat and staring at him. "That reminds me. Did you say there was a girl here from New York?
They stopped to lunch at Baxter Springs, and to water the team; and it was considerably after dark when they finally drove creaking up the main street of Haskell and stopped in front of the Timmons House to unload. The street was devoid of excitement, although the Red Dog was wide open for business, and Westcott caught a glimpse of Mike busily engaged behind the bar.
When old man Timmons finally left her, after placing the flaring lamp on a chair, and went pattering back down the bare hall, she glanced shudderingly about at her unpleasant surroundings, none too pleased with the turn of events. The room was scarcely large enough to contain the few articles of furniture absolutely required.
"Riding herd at a place they call Sunken Valley, about fifty miles south of here. He and Moore have got ten or twelve Mexicans, and maybe three hundred head of cattle to look after, until I can send somebody out there to help him bring them in. Now that's all you need to know, Timmons; but I've got a question or two I want to ask you. Come on back into the office."
He never glanced back until he turned into the north trail at the edge of town; there the path dropped suddenly toward the bed of the creek, and he was concealed from view. In the rock shadow he paused, chuckling grimly as he observed the New Yorker cross the street to the hotel, hastening, no doubt, to interview Timmons.
She must have paid her bill." "Oh, she was square enough sure. She left money an' a note pinned to her pillow; sed she'd just got a message callin' her back home want ter see whut she wrote?" "You bet I do, Timmons! Have you got the note here?" Timmons waddled around behind the desk and ran his hand into a drawer.
A moment later those below heard him pounding at a door; then his voice sounded: "This is Jim Westcott; open up." Timmons stood gazing blankly at the empty stair-case, mopping his face with a bandanna handkerchief. Then he removed his horn-rimmed spectacles, and polished them, as though what mind he possessed had become completely dazed. "Well, I'll be jiggered," he confessed audibly.
"Yes; how are you, Mrs. Timmons?" "I'm as well as common, thanky, Dolly. Drive slower, Joe. What's the use o' hurryin'? They can't do a thing till she gits thar; besides, I want to git at the straight o' this business. Say, Dolly, it ain't true, is it, that you intend to stand up for women goin' to the polls?"
"And the young woman? Hes she got enything ter do with it?" "Not a thing, Timmons; but I want to keep her out of the hands of that bunch. Give me a lamp and I'll go up-stairs and think this game out." Stella Donovan never forgot the miseries of her first night in Haskell.
Ten minutes later Timmons, guiltless of any coat, but temporarily laying aside his pipe as a special act of courtesy, escorted her into the dining-room and seated her at a table between the two front windows.
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