He hesitated at the last name, and a brick-red flush suffused his stolid face, but Willa paid no heed.
"Who are they?"
"The Widow Atkinson runs the eating-house for miners at the end of the street; hard-shell temperance, she is, and they say Atkinson used to wait on table with her apron tied round him and dassent even smoke indoors." He paused. "Big Olaf is a Swede who got hurt in the mine years ago and the company gives him an annuity. Kind of cracked he is, too, but harmless. You see, Ma'am, when the big boom died down gradual and the town settled into a one-horse gait, the young folks naturally pushed on to the next strike that promised a fortune, and the old ones drifted back to where they come from."
"And Klondike Kate; who is she?" Willa persisted.
Her host shifted from one foot to the other in an agony of embarrassment.
"She—she's just a woman that stays on here because there ain't any other place for her to go, Ma'am. She does odd jobs when she can find any to do and the missus helps her out now and then, but she ain't the kind you'd want anything to do with. The missus'll tell you if you ask her."
"I understand," said Willa quickly. "Is that the Red Dog over there, where the man is sweeping sawdust out to the road?"
She had crossed to the door and opened it, and her host approached, peering over her shoulder.
"Yes'm, that's Bill Ryder himself."
"I would like to talk to him," Willa announced. "I want to ask him some questions about the early days here."