desk holding a hotel register, likewise
inksplashed. Beyond the storeroom was a long, narrow dining room on one
side and a few little cell-like rooms on the other with a crack of a hall
between them leading back to the kitchen, the whole structure, only one
story high, having more vertical boards than horizontal in its making. But
the lettering over the front door bore the brave information that this was
the Post Office, the General Merchandise Store, and the Jacobs House, all
in one.

The rain of the night had shifted to a light snow that whiffed about in
little white pellets, adding nothing to the land in the way of moisture,
or beauty, or protection from cold. Just a chill fraying out of the rain's
end that matched the bitterness of the wind's long sweep from out of the
vast northwest. A gray sky was clamped down over all, so dull and
monotonous, it seemed that no rainbow tint could ever again brighten the
world.

"The stage is late again," observed one of the men.

"Always is when you want her particular." This from a large man who held
the door open long enough to stare up the open street for the sign of the
coming stage and to let in a surge of cold air at the same time.

"Well, shut the door, Champers. The stage doesn't come inside. It stops at
Hans Wyker's saloon first, anyhow," one of the men behind a counter
declared.

"If you'd open a bar here you'd do some business and run that Wyker fellow
out. Steward, you and Jacobs are too danged satisfied with yourselves. We
need some business spirit in this town if we want to get the county seat
here," Champers declared.

"That may help your real estate, but it's not my kind of business, and no
bar is going into this tavern," Jacobs replied, leaning his elbow against
the back of Stewart, who was bending over the desk.

Stewart and Jacobs were young men, the former a finely built, fair-haired
Scotchman from whom good nature, good health, and good morals fairly
radiated; not the kind of man to become a leader, but rather to belong to
the substantial following of a leader.

Jacobs was short, and slender, and dark--unmistakably of Jewish
blood--with a keen black eye, quick motions, and the general air of a
shrewd business man, letting no dollar escape him. He had also the air of
a gentleman. Nobody in Carey's Crossing had ever heard him swear--the
language of the frontier always--nor seen him drink, nor had taken a
parcel from his store that had been tied up with