"H-s-h. Throttle your voice down. This place is full of men on the look-out for somethin' like that, an' you can't keep it too dark until it's all settled."
"Well, ain't we going to put up somewhere?" said Allan, breaking the silence that followed Riles' warning. "There ought to be an Alberta hotel here, somewhere. I saw one in every town for the last two hundred miles."
"I got that beat," said Riles, with a snicker. "Boardin' on a lord, or duke, or somethin'."
"Don't say?"
"Yeh. You mind Gard'ner? Him 'at lit out from Plainville after that stealin' affair?"
"The one you got credit for bein' mixed up in?" said Allan, with disconcerting frankness. "A lame kind of a lord he'd make. What about him?"
"Well, he struck a soft thing out here, fo' sure. This lord I'm tellin' you about's gone off home over some bloomin' estate or other, an' Gard'ner's runnin' his ranch—his 'bloody-well rawnch' he calls it. Gets a good fat wad for ridin' round, an' hires a man to do the work. But it was Gard'ner put me on t' this coal mine deal."
"Let's get settled first, and we'll talk about Gardiner and the mine afterwards," said Harris, and they joined the throng that was now wending its way to the hotels.
"How's your thirst, Hiram?" inquired Harris, after he had registered.
"Pretty sticky," confessed Riles. "But they soak you a quarter to wash it out here."