Rosa Phillips sat in the Mountaineer House strumming a Spanish guitar, and singing,
“There's a turned down page, as some writer says, in every human life,
A hidden story of happier days, of peace amidst the strife.
A folded down leaf which the world knows not. A love dream rudely crushed,
The sight of a face that is not forgot. Although the voice be hushed.”
She rose and stood at a window, holding the dusty curtain aside with one white hand and peering cautiously forth into the dusk. A horse was galloping up the Folsom road. The horseman was near—was under the trees in front—was past—and gone down the river road without slackening his animal's rapid gait.
“He does not stop at the Mountaineer House these days,” said Tom Bell's sneering voice at her elbow. “There is a new actress at the opera house in Rattlesnake.”
The woman's dark eyes flashed, but she answered evenly enough:
“He does not stop, the handsome Dick, so you, senor, have not the cause to be jealous. Is it not so?”
“Cause? Why, you Spanish jade, you've never been the same to me since Rattlesnake Dick came prowling back from Shasta county to his old haunts in Placer.” Rosa's thin, red lips curled.
“Senor, I am what it pleases me to be.”
“And Jack Phillips permits you to be!”
She shrugged her slender shoulders.