“How much?”
“I don’t know. I’d have to find out. How about the others?”
“What others?”
I seemed surprised. “Why,” I said, “the others who were looking for her.”
She said thoughtfully, “I guess I shouldn’t have made that crack about the blazed trail.”
I said, “No. The man who’s running the paper didn’t like that crack.”
She focused her eyes on a big glass mug that had evidently been a beer glass at some time in the history of the place. Turning the glass stem slowly in her fingers, she asked, “How long have you lived in the big city?”
“All my life,” I said.
“Like it?” she asked.
“Not particularly.”