THE FIGHTING SHEPHERDESS
rate and shabby, unpretentious even in its prime, but it looked imposing to Kate, who never had seen anything better than the Prouty House.
The loose tiling clacked as she walked across the office to the clerk's desk. That person eyed her dubiously as she laid the flour sack containing her belongings on the counter and registered. He saw in Kate only a woman peculiarly dressed, with a tanned and not too clean face, dishevelled hair, weary-eyed, and alone at a late hour. He missed altogether the indefinable atmosphere of character and substantiality which a more discerning and experienced person would have recognized at once.
"Baggage?" curtly, as she returned him the pen.
She indicated the grimy flour sack.
A supercilious eyebrow went up.
"You'll have to pay in advance. Six bits."
Kate reddened.
" Is that customary, or because you don't like my looks?;'
Taking umbrage at the asperity of her tone, he replied impudently :
"Well — I don't know you from a crow, do I?"
Kate's eyes flashed.
"You will before I leave Omaha."
He laughed incredulously as he took a key from the rack.
Kate followed him up the dirty stairway through a dingy hall to a still dingier room in the back of the house. Long and narrow, it looked like a kalsomined cave illumined by a lightning bug in a bottle when he turned the electric switch. She was too tired, however, to be critical and in her utter weariness lost consciousness as soon as her head touched the pillow and slept dreamlessly until
the dawn came feebly though the coarse lace curtain that.
326
