To the last man of them in the road house they gave her their immediate and exclusive attention. Briefly suspended were all such operations as smoking, drinking, newspaper reading or card playing. They looked at her gravely, speculatively and with frankly unhidden interest. One man who had laid a wet coat aside donned it again swiftly and surreptitiously. Another in awkward fashion, as she passed close to him, half rose and then sank back into his chair. Still others merely narrowed the gaze that was bent upon her steadily.
She went straight to the fireplace, threw off her wraps and extended her hands to the blaze. So for a moment she stood, her shoulders stirring to the shiver which ran down her whole body. Then she turned her head a little and for the first time took in all of the rude appointments of the room.
"Oh!" she gasped. "I…."
"It's all right, Miss," said Poke Drury, swinging toward her, his hand lifted as though to stop one in full flight. "You see … just that end there is the bar room," he explained nodding at her reassuringly. "The middle of the room here is the … the parlour; an' down at that end, where the long table is, that's the dinin' room. I ain't ever got aroun' to the partitions yet, but I'm goin' to some day. An' … Ahem!"
He had said it all and, all things considered, had done rather well with an impossible job. The clearing of the throat and a glare to go with it were not for the startled girl but for that part of the room where the bar and card tables were being used.
"Oh," said the girl again. And then, turning her back upon the bar and so allowing the firelight to add to the sparkle of her eyes and the flush on her cheeks, "Of course. One mustn't expect everything. And please don't ask the gentlemen to … to stop whatever they are doing on my account. I'm quite warm now." She smiled brightly at her host and shivered again.
"May I go right to my room?"
In the days when Poke Drury's road house stood lone and aloof from the world in Big Pine Flat, very little of the world from which such as Poke Drury had retreated had ever peered into these mountain-bound fastnesses; certainly less than few women of the type of this girl had ever come here in the memory of the men who now, some boldly and some shyly, regarded her drying herself and seeking warmth in front of the blazing fire. True, at the time there were in the house three others of her sex. But they were … different.
"May I go right to my room?" she repeated as the landlord stood gaping at her rather foolishly. She imagined that he had not heard, being a little deaf … or that, possibly, the poor chap was a trifle slow witted. And again she smiled on him kindly and again he noted the shiver bespeaking both chill and fatigue.
But to Poke Drury there had come an inspiration. Not much of one, perhaps, yet he quickly availed himself of it. Hanging in a dusty corner near the long dining table, was an old and long disused guest's book, the official road house register. Drury's wandering eye lighted upon it.