“Not to me,” laughed Ruth. “I never saw anything half so ugly. But look, Helen,” she opened the door to another room. “This isn’t bad!”
They had entered the living room, the one apartment that presented any sort of homelike appearance. One end of the room was practically taken up by an immense fireplace. Some big, comfortable chairs were scattered about and in them were cushions that, while faded and worn, were immaculately clean.
There was a long table in the center of the room on which were lying some old periodicals and magazines that looked as faded and worn as the cushions in the chairs.
Some animal skins hung on the walls, effectually mitigating the bareness of the rafters, and rag rugs were flung over the rough, unvarnished floors. An oil lamp completed the furnishings.
As the girls advanced further into the room some one rose from the shadowy far corner of it and looked curiously at them. The newcomers were rather startled at the apparition since they had supposed the room to be empty and were glad when the stranger crossed to the hall and disappeared.
“One of our fellow guests at Knockout Inn,” laughed Helen, as she and Ruth, arms about each other, sauntered out to the front of the house where they were to meet Tom and Chess.
There was not much to be done for the rest of that day except to wander about and become better acquainted with the immediate environs of their headquarters. On the morrow Ruth planned to start bright and early in search of locations.
There was nothing remarkable about Knockout Point. A half-abandoned settlement on the river front, with a few shabby stores, a few scattered houses hardly worthy of the name, an inn, namely Knockout Inn, and, set some distance back from its more respectable neighbors, a dance hall and gambling den called The Big Chance.
Naturally the girls and their escorts did not explore this latter place of amusement very thoroughly, although Ruth did think that on some future occasion she might be able to use it in her picture, provided, of course, the management consented.
But even the run-down appearance of the town in general could do nothing to ruin the scenic grandeur of the mountains in the background.