Several cushionless arm-chairs, such as were used in bar-rooms, two
tables, a sideboard, half bar and half cupboard, and a rocking-chair
comprised the furniture, and a few bear and buffalo skins covered
the floor. Hale sank into one of the arm-chairs, and, with a lazy
satisfaction, partly born of his fatigue and partly from some
newly-discovered appreciative faculty, gazed around the room, and then
at the mistress of the house, with whom the others were talking.
She was tall, gaunt, and withered; in spite of her evident years, her
twisted hair was still dark and full, and her eyes bright and piercing;
her complexion and teeth had long since succumbed to the vitiating
effects of frontier cookery, and her lips were stained with the yellow
juice of a brier-wood pipe she held in her mouth. The ostler had
explained their intrusion, and veiled their character under the vague
epithet of a "hunting party," and was now evidently describing them
personally. In his new-found philosophy the fact that the interest of
his hostess seemed to be excited only by the names of his companions,
that he himself was carelessly, and even deprecatingly, alluded to as
the "stranger from Eagle's" by the ostler, and completely overlooked by
the old woman, gave him no concern.
"You'll have to talk to Zenobia yourself. Dod rot ef I'm gine to
interfere. She knows Hennicker's ways, and if she chooses to take in
transients it ain't no funeral o' mine. Zeenie! You, Zeenie! Look yer!"
A tall, lazy-looking, handsome girl appeared on the threshold of the
next room, and with a hand on each door-post slowly swung herself
backwards and forwards, without entering. "Well, Maw?"
The old woman briefly and unalluringly pictured the condition of the
travellers.
"Paw ain't here," began the girl doubtfully, "and--How dy, Dick! is that
you?" The interruption was caused by her recognition of the ostler, and
she lounged into the room. In spite of a skimp, slatternly gown, whose
straight skirt clung to her lower limbs, there was a quaint, nymph-like
|