Mollie was sitting in an armchair on a small raised platform about halfway back. She kept a brisk and business-like eye on proceedings. No puncher who had gone broke, no tenderfoot out of luck, could go hungry in Bear Cat if she knew it. The restaurant and the bar were at their service just as though they had come off the range with a pay-check intact. They could pay when they had the money. No books were kept. Their memories were the only ledgers. Few of these debts of honor went unpaid in the end.
But Mollie, though tender-hearted, knew how to run the place. Her brusque, curt manner suited Bear Cat. She could be hail-fellow or hard as flint, depending on circumstances. The patrons at Gillespie’s remembered her sex and yet forgot it. They guarded their speech, but they drank with her at the bar or sat across a poker table from her on equal terms. She was a good sport and could lose or win large sums imperturbably.
Below her now there floated past a tide of hot-blooded youth eager to make the most of the few hours left before the dusty trails called. Most of these punchers would go back penniless to another month or two of hard and reckless riding. But they would go gayly, without regret, the sunshine of irrepressible boyhood in their hearts. The rattle of chips, the sound of laughter, the murmur of conversation, the even voice of the croupier at the roulette table, filled the hall.
Jim Larson, a cowman from down the river, sat on the edge of the platform.
“The Boot brand’s puttin’ a thousand head in the upper country this fall, Mollie. Looks to me like bad business, but there’s a chance I’m wrong at that. My bet is you can’t run cows there without winter feed. There won’t many of ’em rough through.”
“Some’ll drift down to the river,” Mollie said, her preoccupied eyes on the stud table where a slight altercation seemed to be under way. Her method of dealing with quarrels was simple. The first rule was based on one of Blister Haines’s paradoxes. “The best way to settle trouble is not to have it.” She tried to stop difficulties before they became acute. If this failed, she walked between the angry youths and read the riot act to them.
“Some will,” admitted Larson. “More of ’em won’t.”
Mollie rose, to step down from the platform. She did not reach the stud table. A commotion at the front door drew her attention. Mrs. Gillespie was a solid, heavy-set woman, but she moved with an energy that carried her swiftly. She reached the bar before any of the men from the gambling-tables.
A girl was leaning weakly against the door-jamb. Hat and shoes were gone. The hair was a great black mop framing a small face white to the lips. The stocking soles were worn through. When one foot shifted to get a better purchase for support, a bloodstained track was left on the floor. The short dress was frozen stiff.
The dark, haunted eyes moved uncertainly round the circle of faces staring at her. The lips opened and made the motions of speech, but no sound came from them. Without any warning the girl collapsed.