the passengers
in drowning the memory of their meal in "drinks at the bar," in smoking,
and even in a hurried game of "old sledge," or dominoes. Yet to-day
the deserted table was still occupied by a belated traveler, and a
lady--separated by a wilderness of empty dishes--who had arrived after
the stage-coach. Observing which, the landlord, perhaps touched by
this unwonted appreciation of his fare, moved forward to give them his
personal attention.

He was a man, however, who seemed to be singularly deficient in those
supreme qualities which in the West have exalted the ability to "keep a
hotel" into a proverbial synonym for superexcellence. He had little or
no innovating genius, no trade devices, no assumption, no faculty for
advertisement, no progressiveness, and no "racket." He had the tolerant
good-humor of the Southwestern pioneer, to whom cyclones, famine,
drought, floods, pestilence, and savages were things to be accepted,
and whom disaster, if it did not stimulate, certainly did not appall. He
received the insults, complaints, and criticisms of hurried and hungry
passengers, the comments and threats of the Stage Company as he had
submitted to the aggressions of a stupid, unjust, but overruling
Nature--with unshaken calm. Perhaps herein lay his strength. People
were obliged to submit to him and his hotel as part of the unfinished
civilization, and they even saw something humorous in his impassiveness.
Those who preferred to remonstrate with him emerged from the discussion
with the general feeling of having been played with by a large-hearted
and paternally disposed bear. Tall and long-limbed, with much strength
in his lazy muscles, there was also a prevailing impression that this
feeling might be intensified if the discussion were ever carried to
physical contention. Of his personal history it was known only that he
had emigrated from Wisconsin in 1852, that he had calmly unyoked his ox
teams at Big Flume, then a trackless wilderness, and on the opening of a
wagon road to the new mines had built a wayside station which eventually
developed into the present hotel. He had been divorced in a Western
State by his wife "Rosalie," locally known as "The Prairie Flower of
Elkham Creek," for incompatibility of temper! Her temper was not stated.

Such was Abner Langworthy, the proprietor, as he moved leisurely down
towards the lady guest, who was nearest, and who was sitting with her
back to the passage between the tables.