"I'll fetch him for you!" her host offered, recovering hastily from his astonishment. "You just wait here, he'll be right pleased to come——"
"No, thank you. I will go over, myself." Willa fastened her cloak with a decisive air. "He came with the first rush, you tell me? Then he should be able to remember what I want to learn."
She picked her way across the hummocks of frozen mud powdered with snow in the road, and approached the rotund, jovial-faced little man who was swinging his worn broom energetically in a cloud of sawdust.
He paused as she neared him, his jaw sagging at the apparition of a dainty, richly dressed, strange female alone on the street of Topaz.
"Good-morning. You're Mr. Ryder, aren't you?" she smiled.
"That's me, Ma'am." He pulled off his soft-brimmed hat, revealing a wide expanse of shining pink scalp, fringed with a scanty growth of grizzled hair.
"The proprietor of the Palace Hotel tells me that you are one of the oldest inhabitants left, Mr. Ryder, and I wonder if you would mind telling me something of the people who used to live in Topaz Gulch years ago. I am trying to locate some lost relatives."
"I'll be glad to tell you anything I can, Ma'am." His round face quickened with interest. "I keep bachelor house, but if you don't object to walking through the bar—it's empty now—there's a room back where we can talk."
He led the way and Willa followed him. Bare and ramshackle as it was, the sight of the bar and the little tables fronting it brought acutely to her memory a like room, larger and more resplendent, with baize-covered tables and flaring oil lamps; a tall, spare figure inexpressibly dear to her memory replaced for a moment the rotund one before her and the veil of the past seemed lifted. She was back once more in the Blue Chip.
The vision was dispelled, however, when she found herself in the little back room, scarcely more than a closet, with room enough only for the rusty stove, table and chairs.