He crossed to the counter that ran up the north side of the big bare room, and spoke to the bar-tender.
"Have you seen Mr. Ducane anywhere, Jimmy?"
"Why—he's up to the balcony wi' Robison, Sergeant. I guess they're talkin' some. They've sent for drinks twice."
Tempest leaned over the bar.
"Not had any trouble yet, have you?" he said with dropped voice.
"Not a mite." Jimmy screwed his eyes up, looking round the barn-bare place, where the dark breeds dozed half-fallen on the benches, or smoked stolidly with spittoons between their moccasined feet, or talked in twos and threes with the picturesque hand-movements which often make half the speech of men who have lived among the Indians. Jimmy nodded.
"Pretty as a Sunday-school," he said. "We'll likely have a few muzzy to-night. You wouldn't want to be hard on them, Sergeant? They're as good a bunch of boys as any along the river."
"Don't let them get too gay, then," said Tempest, and went through the inner door and up the wide uncarpeted staircase, seeking Ducane.
Grange's Hotel was the only one in Grey Wolf. The only one "inside"—which is to say, north of latitude fifty-six along these water-ways! It carried the distinction of its position, and of not much else just now; and Tempest, turning along the upper landing, looked on the bare rooms and tumbled beds with an indifference bred of familiarity. They were for the men of the trail, these places; surveyors, prospectors going through to the ore-beds of the north; traders on their home-way to another five years "inside"; the men of the Treaty Party, perhaps, or those who took the long patrol with the Judge who happened to pass Grey Wolf in his yearly round. But they were for men only. Few women travelled that trail which men's feet found difficult at times, and those who passed it were chiefly of the pioneer class; brave-eyed, hard-handed women, trekking with their home and their children and their husbands into the loneliness, and sleeping at night with the tent-peak and the stars above them.
