, and the flames come together and rise and jump and twine
together. Two pieces of burnin' wood, but only one flame--d'you feel
it?--Oh, Kate, our bodies is ashes and dust, and all that's worth while
is that flame blowin' up from us, settin' the world on fire!"

CHAPTER XXXV

PALE ANNIE

Even in Elkhead there were fires this day. In the Gilead saloon one
might have thought that the liquid heat which the men imbibed would
serve in place of stoves, but the proprietor, "Pale Annie," had an eye
to form, and when the sky was grey he always lighted the stove.

"Pale Annie" he was called because his real name was Anderson Hawberry
Sandringham. That name had been a great aid to him when he was an
undertaker in Kansas City; but Anderson Hawberry Sandringham had fallen
from the straight and narrow path of good undertakers some years before
and he had sought refuge in the mountain-desert, where most things
prosper except sheriffs and grass. He was fully six inches more than six
feet in height and his face was so long and pale that even Haw-Haw
Langley seemed cheerful beside the ex-undertaker. In Kansas City this
had been much prized, for that single face could lend solemnity to any
funeral. In Elkhead it was hardly less of an asset.

People came out of curiosity to see Pale Annie behind the bar with his
tall silk hat--which he could never bring himself to lay aside--among
the cobwebs of the rafters. They came out of curiosity and they remained
to drink--which is a habit in the mountain-desert. A travelling drummer
or a patent medicine man had offered Pale Annie a handsome stake to
simply go about with him and lend the sanction of his face to the talk
of the drummer, but Pale Annie had discovered a veritable philosopher's
stone in Elkhead and he was literally turning whiskey into gold.

This day was even more prosperous than usual for Pale Annie, for the
grey weather and the chilly air made men glad of the warmth, both
external and internal, which Pale Annie possessed in his barroom. His
dextrous hands were never for a moment still at the bar, either setting
out drinks or making change, except when he walked out and threw a fresh
feed into the fire, and stirred up the ruddy depths of the stove with a
tall poker. It was so long, indeed, that it might have served even Pale
Annie for a cane and it was a plain untapered bar of iron which the
blacksmith had given him as the price of a drink, on a day. He needed a
large pok