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DUSTY gray car, long and slimbodied, coasted noiselessly down the trail into Main Street and swung past the Dizzy Ghost with a warning flutter of the exhaust. At the driving-wheel sat a slender figure, graceful, notwithstanding at loose linen cloak smirched with patches of the impalpable alkaline powder that every squall of the desert wind raised from the ground in thinly nebulous sheets. Nor did the masking leather goggles, caked with the soft, clinging mold, erase the impression of loveliness concealed. Beside the wraith-like figure, enshrined in dusty mystery, perched an uncommonly ugly bulldog, made grotesquely hideous by protruding eye-shields fastened above his flat snout. Secured by two flat-linked nickel chains, the dog, grimly confident of the external evidences of his ferocity, sat as tight as sculptured stone, his forelegs curving in a perpetually belligerent bow. The tonneau of the automobile was cluttered with bulging ore sacks and torn tire-shoes.

Along the uneven thoroughfare of Bullfrog straggled idle motors, worn and scratched and shabby from their tours into the alkali-flats, over flint-ribbed trails and through washes of spongy, clogging sand. Smudgy, walnut-tanned chauffeurs sat at the levers of some of them, ready, with engines drumming, to dash out again on the ceaseless quest for treasure. They, as well as the slouching miners loafing on the board sidewalks beneath the shop and saloon awnings, doffed their hats to the girl who rolled by them, the torn ends of her dusty brown veil wisping out behind and revealing a tangled mass of light chestnut hair crowned with a little red cap.

"Who's the fair one, Jonesy?" asked a sallow-cheeked young man who stood framed in the doorway of the Dizzy Ghost, smugly aware that his speckless flannels freshened the dingy surroundings. He turned with a drowsy look of inquiry to the white-haired little man with the ruddy complexion, sitting a few feet from him at the end of the long, polished counter.

Jonesy stepped to the door and shaded his eyes from the sun's glare. He was barely in time to see the graceful automobile twist into a narrow lane, making a sharp turn about a huddled group of lit

tle shacks.

"That 's Betty, the Widow's daughter," he said softly, dropping his hand, and backing into the shade. "That 's her new bubble, the Silver Fox, one of those six-cylinder, fifty horse-power distanceeaters. She makes the trip about every other week to the Red Hawk, just beyond Funeral Range-Bashful Bob Robley's little mint, you know.”

"No, I don't know," said the young man, peevishly. "Bashful Bob Robley? The Widow? Betty? That's all Piute to me. You oracles of the desert take it for granted that a tenderfoot should know the history of every tank-tender, miner, and millionaire from Buffalo Meadows to Skidoo."

"That's so," mused the boyish little veteran of a thousand booms, lighting his skull-bowled pipe with the crystal eyes that he detested to smoke, but delighted to display. "It 's becoming mighty difficult to keep track of you downy youths in these benzine-buggy days, with clouds of prospectors flitting over the Nevada wastes in goggles and dusters, looking

more like the dismal goblins we see in dreams than men. Still, I don't understand how you missed hearing about Bashful Bob Robley and the Red Hawk on your journey down from Reno. Why, he 's Betty's husband, and Betty is the Widow's daughter."

"Oh," muttered the tenderfoot, with an unconscious sigh; "she 's married, then. That sort of quashes the thrill. I'll say this much, though," he added with some animation: "from the movingpicture glimpse I had, she seemed a rare bloom for this arid wilderness. This Robley person has more than a bonanza to congratulate himself on."

Jonesy regarded his fantastic little pipe with dreamy admiration for a moment, pushed back his panama so as to reveal a scanty thatch of white above a broad, crinkled forehead, and fixed the attention of the blasé young man with the remark:

"Usually, when I reveal that she is kin of the Widow Buckley, the reply is, ''Nough said.' It does not require any supplementary discourse to cause Nevada. folk to sit up and take notice. The Widow would have made Barnum's petrified giant rise up on his toes and salute, had the whim developed."

"But you must make allowances for the colossal ignorance of a tenderfoot, a totally new tenderfoot," smiled the young man. "But let the oracle relate."

Surreptitiously exchanging the skullbowled pipe for a more satisfying dudeen, Jonesy began:

"From 'way back in my dim school-boy days I recall a remark anent Cæsar, something like 'wine, widy, wichy! Well, you can lay it all on the case ace that the Widow did pretty much all that. Likewise there were no Mrs. Brutuses sitting around at their knitting, waiting to trim her laurels.

"She arrived about the time Goldfield had obtained the dignity of a few shacks, creating a more or less irregular thoroughfare. Wooden edifices were succeeding tents, for the ore had begun to pan so rich and yellow that there were a few magnates among us who could afford the precious Truckee pine for humble construction work. Yes, and there was quite a bit of building going on or planned. "Next door to the Hush-a-by saloon

LXXVI-10

Paul Wilcox was putting up quite an imposing structure, forty feet front with gingerbread work on the eaves. Paul was fresh from Nome, where he 'd promoted his fortunes some by the deft manipulation of the little ivory ball.

"He was standing outside his shack, sizing up the rich effects of red lead on the façade, and directing the artist who was painting the big sign over the door, when the stage rattled down over the hummocks on its daily run from Tonapah, drawing up before Comfort Inn, across the way, in a whirling spray of dust. The loungers in the hotel dawdled out to get a focus of the strangers and to slip the glad hand to friends. The two camp dogs scuttled down out of an alley of tents with their feeble alkali coughs that they still imagined were terrible warnings of prowess. Our population then was about three hundred and two, counting the said dogs.

"Now, it came to pass that this arrival of the Tonapah stage was the greatest event in the history of the camp since Little Sammy struck the lead of a golden lode under a Joshua-tree. It was as big an event with us as the arrival of Eve in the Garden of Eden, though the Lord knows the scenery was more like the pit than Paradise. You see, the Widow was aboard that stage; likewise, Betty. The Widow came out of the rickety rig in one jump, firmly and solidly, as was her way. Betty followed in her way-demure as a coy kitten; and when the boys got one look at her pretty face, every man-jack of them realized for the first time in some months that there were such things as starched collars and neckties. So there were sudden, burning regrets over the recent demise of Joe the barber, who had unwisely attached himself to the staff of an inefficient sheriff.

"The Widow stopped short of the inn door, swung round on the boys with one of her rare smiles, and then exploded gustily:

"My! but you 're a tough-looking lot! But I knew you would be, and that 's why I came. Wait till you try some of my buckwheats. They'll bring you back to grace, for they 're better than the kind mother used to make.' She waved to Betty, who was a little flustered at the stage door by seven pairs of hands offer

ing to assist her down and carry her luggage.

"Come on, daughter,' laughed the Widow, and swept into the hotel, illuminating its narrow dinginess by her large, beaming smile. The desk was in an uneven bulge of the hallway, if you could call the slit between the bed-stalls a hall. Yours respectfully was proprietor, clerk, bartender, and bell-hop.

'Son,' said the Widow to me, piling her boxes and bags and canary-cage so they made a wall between us, 'be a good boy and take these things to my room. I'll want one for a day or two before I engage a shack and get down to business.'

"That 'son' and 'good boy' sounded good, though I knew I had some few burning summers and bitter winters the best of her, and I was gathering up her parcels and telescopes, when a serious. thought gave me pause. The Comfort Inn was full, jammed tighter 'n a herring-can. The remark was on my lips that my guests were compelled to arrange themselves in layers to fit, when my glance was drawn to the doorway. It was full of faces whose features were twisting in pantomime, and wherever I looked, hand-waves and fingers jabbed mysterious signals, each jab followed by confused mumbling. But the Boniface of the inn saw a light, turned to the Widow, and bowed:

'Madam, the entire hostelry from Little Sammy's front parlor to Waldorf Pete's hammock in the open-faced extension is at your disposal.' Then there was a stampede down the aisle, a crashing open of doors, and the hauling out of grips, ditty-bags, chunks of sample ore, tools, and all the junk a prospector treasures more than heirlooms.

"In less than three minutes the Comfort Inn did n't have a guest who had n't pulled stakes and offered his furnished closet to Mrs. Maud Buckley and daughter. The laugh she released at this demonstration of gallantry was sure worth the price of admission. And Betty's blushes! Well, if she had said, 'Gentlemen, will you kindly give me one of your mines,' there 'd have been a wholesale assignment of claims as fast as the notary could splice on the seals.

"Knew you were a good lot, spite of your looks,' said the Widow in her big,

ringing voice, as Little Sammy ushered her into his sumptuous apartment, begging her pardon with his best Boston accent as he hauled out the one chair of the suite to make room for her entrance. But she had a woman's eye for making things fit, and where he had felt like a hippopotamus in a pill-box, the Widow and Betty were able to move about freely and breathe without bursting the walls.

"The Widow was not long stowing away her kits and canaries, and washing the alkali out of her eyes. The sun was just dipping on its toboggan down the slants of Funeral Range when she burst from the state-room and announced with that finality she gave to every utterance:

"'Jonesy,'-just as if she 'd known me for years, -'I am going out to hire a shack; but I'll be back in time to look after the pig-tailed heathen I see fussing in the back kitchen.'

"I chuckled to myself as she flung through the door, thinking there was an equal opportunity of her hiring a threepiece hutch and building a church out of sage-brush roots. You see, I did n't know the Widow then.

"She marched the length of Main Street and back. A dozen of the boys were trailing along with her, fairly hanging on her every word. The procession halted in front of Paul Wilcox's place opposite the inn. The painter had just finished the sign, and Paul was still admiring the masterpiece through one cocked eye.

66

''Nice bit o' shanty you 've got there,' said the Widow, tapping him on the shoulder so he spun round and reached for his gun. When he saw who it was, his jaw slipped down, and he turned three colors under his mahogany skin.

""Look here,' she ran on, squaring her shoulders and taking a deep breath, 'I am going to hire half your shack. The situation appeals to me, and I guess the town will back me up in shaving down your gambling hell. I know there 's got to be gambling here. I learned at Nome that men who dig gold out of the ground are more like moths than proper human beings. They no sooner get their pretty wings than they rush madly to the first flame that 'll singe them. But I imagine we 'll be good neighbors so long as you keep order and cut out the gun-play.'

All this in one breath, striking Paul Wilcox cold and making his red little eyes blink like a bat in a sun-glow. When he got his voice, his cheeks were lime green.

"Madam,' he said hard and gritty, 'I don't talk your language. There is as large a chance for you to rent half my shack as there is of your raising sheep on Casket Mountain. I would n't let out a caboose in the left wing for one thousand hard men a month. Ain't got room enough for all my tables as it is.

Why-'

"But there his tongue halted. The Widow stepped up to him in two short strides and caught his arm. She said a few words to him soft and low, drawing back to watch him as he turned verdigris yellow and quaked in his boots. Finally he choked, gripping his Adam's apple, that seemed bulging through his skin.

"'Yes, yes,' he said huskily, 'you can have it, and I'll put in the partition and tables for the restaurant; but for God's sake-'

"Her hard, dry laugh stopped him again, and she swung round on us with: 'Mr. Flet, oh, I beg pardon,-Wilcox, has consented to rent me half of his mansion, boys. He-well, never mind.' Then she turned to him again and went

on:

""You see that the carpenter builds the tables and cash-desk. I'll attend to the stove and fixings. And that sign-' She paused and allowed her features to relax into a smile,-'did it not strike you, Mr.—er, Wilcox,' she said, holding her sides and shaking, 'that Moose Skin does not scan well in your line of business? For instance, that last word, though gorgeously painted, is a trifle too. insinuating, if not a dangerous allusion to your gentle profession. I advise you to cut the board right in half there. "The Moose" will do for your shingle. Mine will be plain and simple-"The Home Grub." Now don't look so sad about losing the pelt of your antlered pet, for I suppose you can look after the skin part of your profession inside.' Her laugh rolled out on the evening stillness and echoed away in a dip of the hills, dying in a crackling chuckle in Red Horse Gulch.

"There was no doubt about the destined popularity of The Home Grub.

The Widow was a keen business woman, and before she got her stove up and hired her Piute dish-washers she had sold fiftytrip meal-tickets to the entire community. There was no need of canvassing for patronage. She simply invited the boys to a flap-jack orgy on the morning after her arrival, standing over the galley in the Comfort Inn and turning the buckwheats until her arm was tired. We all sat outside on long benches while Betty passed round the steaming pancakes on platters and bits of shingle. Every time she issued from the kitchen with a new relay the camp rose and cheered.

"Preceding this festival occasion it had been mostly a case of every man his own chef. As a consequence, the general diet had been canned tack and bleary coffee. The coffee the Widow made was clear as the Tahoe Spring, and she 'd freighted down on the hurricane-deck of the Tonapah stage a case of condensed cream.

"That was sure a pancake barbecue the pioneer lads of Goldfield will remember after they 've forgotten their first wives. Whenever I feel the blues coming on, I close my eyes and summon up the picture of Her Gracious Majesty Queen Bess, as some of the younger chaps called Betty, tripping out the side door of the Comfort Inn with a tin plate heaped high with glistening brown buckwheat cakes gripped daintily in little pink-and-white fingers, her sleeves rolled up over plump, dimpled

arms.

"Now, I might insert right here before I forget it that those dimples in Betty's arms mighty near caused a tragedy. Red Kenny, who was fresh from the Cœur d'Alênes, with some reputation as a twohanded shooter, was sneaking glances at Betty every time she passed; and so was Molly Vanoff,-Christian name Molokai, if I remember rightly,-the tow-whiskered Russian engineer, a wild little cuss who must have had some rare Tatar ancestors.

"I heard Red, his mouth full of cakes, whisper to Molly: 'See those dimpleseight to each arm! D'jever see anything so pretty? Makes me feel good all over, and forget my past, just to look at that sweet little lady. I'm going to put on some more guns, Molly, an' ther first man that cusses or chews terbaccer in that girl's vicinity is going to acquire an infu