"Halloo, Jake, that you?"
The man with the lantern raised it, but its light merely served to blind him. Terry passed on without a word and heard the other mutter behind him: "Some damn stranger!"
Perhaps strangers were not welcome in Craterville. At least, it seemed so when he reached the hotel after putting up his horse in the shed behind the old building. Half a dozen dark forms sat on the veranda talking in the subdued voices which he had noted before. Terry stepped through the lighted doorway. There was no one inside.
"Want something?" called a voice from the porch. The widow Rickson came in to him.
"A room, please," said Terry.
But she was gaping at him. "You! Terence—Hollis!"
A thousand things seemed to be in that last word, which she brought out with a shrill ring of her voice. Terry noted that the talking on the porch was cut off as though a hand had been clapped over the mouth of every man.
He recalled that the widow had been long a friend of the sheriff and he was suddenly embarrassed.
"If you have a spare room, Mrs. Rickson. Otherwise, I'll find—"
Her manner had changed. It became as strangely ingratiating as it had been horrified, suspicious, before.