She would have telegraphed to Clark & Hayward, but she had no money for the telegram. She would have found work if there had been any that she could do. The manager of the small telegraph-office was the only operator. In the little town there were a few stores, already supplied with clerks, a couple of boarding-houses on Whiskey Row, and scores of pretty little houses in which obviously no servants were employed. The local paper carried half a dozen "help wanted" advertisements for stenographers and cooks on the oil-leases. She did not know stenography, and she did not have the ability to cook for twenty or forty hungry men.
A bill in her box at the end of the week told her that her room was costing three dollars a day, and she dared not precipitate inquiry by asking for a cheaper one. She was appalled by the prices of the bill-of-fare, and ate sparingly, signing the checks, however, with a careless scrawl and a confident smile at the waitress.
She was coming from the dining-room on the evening of the seventh day when the manager of the hotel, somewhat embarrassed, asked her not to sign any more checks for meals. It was a new rule of the house, he said. She smiled at him, too, and agreed easily. "Why, certainly!" Altering her intention of going up-stairs, she walked into the lobby and sat relaxed in a chair, glancing with an appearance of interest at a newspaper.
So it happened that she saw the item in the middle of the column, which at last gave her news of Bert.
BERT KENNEDY SOUGHT ON BAD CHECK CHARGE
Charging Gilbert H. Kennedy, well-known along the city's joy zones, with cashing a bogus check for a hundred dollars on the Metropolitan National Bank, Judge C. K. Washburne yesterday issued a warrant for the arrest of the young man on a felony charge. The police search for Kennedy and his young wife, a former candy-store girl, has so far proved fruitless. Interviewed at his residence in Los Angeles last night, former Judge G. H. Kennedy, father of the missing man, controller of the Central Trust Company until his indictment some years ago for mishandling its funds, denied knowledge of his son's whereabouts, saying that he had not been on good terms with his son for several years.
After some time she was able to rise and walk quite steadily across the lobby. Her hand on the banister kept her from stumbling very much while she went up-stairs. There was darkness in her room, and it covered her like a shield. She stood straight and still, one hand pressing against the wall.
It was Saturday night, and in the happy custom of the oil fields a block of the oiled street had been roped off for dancing. Already the musicians were tuning their instruments. Impatient drillers and tool-dressers, with their best girls, were cheering their efforts with bantering applause. The ropes were giving way before the pressure of the holiday crowd in a tumult of shouts and laughter.
Suddenly, with a rollicking swing, the band began to play. The tune rose gaily through the hot, still night, and beneath it ran a rustling undertone, the shuffling of many dancing feet. Below her window the pavement was a swirl of movement and color. Her body relaxed slowly, letting her down into a crumpled heap, and she lay against the window-sill with her face hidden in the circle of her arms.