Now she sat sidewise in her chair, sweeping with animated eyes the primitive dining-room, its walls whitewashed, its low ceiling hung with strands of pinked-out, colored paper, its board floor here and there crossed by strips of cocoanut matting. At one end a hole in the wall communicated with the kitchen and through this the naked arms of the Chinaman, brown against the uprolled ends of his white sleeves, protruded, offering dishes to the single waitress who was not always there to receive them.
The girl, Cora by name, was particularly delinquent this morning. Several times the Chinaman was forced to remove his arms and substitute his face in the opening while he projected an enraged yell of “Corla!” among the hotel guests. Her dereliction of duty was caused by an overpowering interest in the Cannons, round whom she hovered in enchanted observation. On ordinary occasions Cora was content to wait on the group of men, local bachelors whose lonely state made it more convenient for them “to eat” at the hotel, and who sat—two bending lines of masculine backs—at either side of a long table. Cora’s usual method was to set the viands before them and then seat herself at the end of the table and enliven the meal with light conversation. To-day, however, they were neglected. She scarcely answered their salutations, but, banging the dishes down, hasted away to the Cannon table, where she stood fixedly regarding the strange young lady.
Perley’s warnings of bad weather were soon verified. Early in the afternoon the idle, occasional snowflakes had begun to fall thickly, with a soft, persistent steadiness of purpose. The icy stillness of the morning gave place to a wind, uncertain and whispering at first, but, as the day advanced, gathering volume and speed. The office and bar filled with men, some of them—snow powdered as if a huge sugar-sifter had been shaken over them—having tramped in from small camps in the vicinity. Clamor and vociferations, mixed with the smell of strong drinks and damp woolens, rose from the bar. Constant gusts of cold air swept the lower passages, and snow was tramped into the matting round the hall stove.
At four o’clock, Willoughby, the Englishman who had charge of the shut-down Bella K. mine, came, butting head down against the wind, a group of dogs at his heels, to claim the hospitality of the hotel. His watchman, an old timer, had advised him to seek a shelter better stored with provisions than the office building of the Bella K. Willoughby, whose accent and manner had proclaimed him as one of high distinction before it was known in Antelope that he was “some relation to a lord,” was made welcome in the bar. His four red setter dogs, shut out from that hospitable retreat by the swing door, grouped around it and stared expectantly, each shout from within being answered by them with plaintive and ingratiating whines.
The afternoon was still young when the day began to darken. Rose Cannon, who had been sitting in the parlor, dreaming over a fire of logs, went to the window, wondering at the growing gloom. The wind had risen to a wild, sweeping speed, that tore the snow fine as a mist. There were no lazy, woolly flakes now. They had turned into an opaque, slanting veil which here and there curled into snowy mounds and in other places left the ground bare. It seemed as if a giant paint-brush, soaked in white, had been swept over the outlook. Now and then a figure, head down, hands in pockets, the front of the body looking as though the paint-brush had been slapped across it, came into view, shadowy and unsubstantial in the mist-like density.
Rose looked out on it with an interest that was a little soberer than the debonair blitheness of her morning mood. If it kept up they might be snowed in for days, Perley had said. That being the case, this room, the hotel’s one parlor, would be her retreat, her abiding place—for her bedroom was as cold as an ice-chest—until they were liberated. With the light, half-whimsical smile that came so readily to her lips, she turned from the window and surveyed it judicially.
Truly it was not bad. Seen by the light of the flaming logs pulsing on the obscurity already lurking in the corners, it had the charm of the fire-warmed interior, tight-closed against outer storm. A twilight room lit only by a fire, with wind and snow outside, is the coziest habitation in the world. It seemed to Rose it would make a misanthrope feel friendly, prone to sociable chat and confidence. When the day grew still dimmer she would draw the curtains (they were of a faded green rep) and pull up the old horsehair arm-chairs that were set back so demurely in the corners. Her eyes strayed to the melodeon and then to the wall above it, where hung a picture of a mining millionaire, once of the neighborhood, recently deceased, a circlet of wax flowers from his bier surrounding his head, and the whole neatly incased in glass. Washington crossing the Delaware made a pendent on the opposite wall. On the center-table there were many books in various stages of unrepair and in all forms of bindings. These were the literary aftermath left by the mining men, who, since the early sixties, had been stopping at Antelope on their hopeful journeys up and down the mineral belt.
She was leaving the window to return to her seat by the fire when the complete silence that seemed to hold the outside world in a spell was broken by sudden sounds. Voices, the crack of a whip, then a grinding thump against the hotel porch, caught her ear and whirled her back to the pane. A large covered vehicle, with the whitened shapes of a smoking team drooping before it, had just drawn up at the steps. Two masculine figures, carrying bags, emerged from the interior, and from the driver’s seat a muffled shape—a cylinder of wrappings which appeared to have a lively human core—gave forth much loud and profane language. The isolation and remoteness of her surroundings had already begun to affect the town-bred young lady. She ran to the door of the parlor, as ingenuously curious to see the new arrivals and find out who they were as though she had lived in Antelope for a year.
Looking down the hall she saw the front door open violently inward and two men hastily enter. The wind seemed to blow them in and before Perley’s boy could press the door shut the snow had whitened the damp matting. No stage passed through Antelope in these days of its decline, and the curiosity felt by Rose was shared by the whole hotel. The swing door to the bar opened and men pressed into the aperture. Mrs. Perley came up from the kitchen, wiping a dish. Cora appeared in the dining-room doorway, and in answer to Miss Cannon’s inquiringly-lifted eyebrows, called across the hall:
“It’s the Murphysville stage on the down-trip to Rocky Bar. I guess they thought they couldn’t make it. The driver don’t like to run no risks and so he’s brought ’em round this way and dumped ’em here. There ain’t but two passengers. That’s them.”