ded close on the right and
left, with a loftier range behind, running up to scattered summits white
with snow and blue with distance. The shadows of the late afternoon were
thick as fog in the gulch, and all the lower mountains were already dim
so that the snow-peaks in the distance seemed as detached, and high as
clouds. Ben Connor sat with his cane between his knees and his hands
draped over its amber head and watched those shining places until the
fat man heaved his head over his shoulder.

"Most like somebody told you about Townsend's Hotel?"

His passenger moved his attention from the mountain to his companion. He
was so leisurely about it that it seemed he had not heard.

"Yes," he said, "I was told of the place."

"Who?" said the other expectantly.

"A friend of mine."

The fat man grunted and worked his head around so far that a great
wrinkle rolled up his neck close to his ear. He looked into the eye of
the stranger.

"Me being Jack Townsend, I'm sort of interested to know things like
that; the ones that like my place and them that don't."

Connor nodded, but since he showed no inclination to name his friend,
Jack Townsend swung on a new tack to come to the windward of this
uncommunicative guest. Lukin was a fairly inquisitive town, and the
hotel proprietor usually contributed his due portion and more to the
gossips.

"Some comes for one reason and some for another," went on Townsend,
"which generally it's to hunt and fish. That ain't funny come to think
of it, because outside of liars nobody ever hooked finer trout than what
comes out of the Big Sandy. Some of 'em comes for the mining--they was a
strike over to South Point last week--and some for the cows, but mostly
it's the fishing and the hunting."

He paused, but having waited in vain he said directly: "I can show you
the best holes in the Big Sandy."

There was another of those little waits with which, it seemed, the
stranger met every remark; not a thoughtful pause, but rather as though
he wondered if it were worth while to make any answer.

"I've come here for the silence," he said.

"Silence," repeated Townsend, nodding in the manner of one who does not
understand.

Then he flipped the roan with the butt of his lines and squinted down
the gulch, for he felt there might be a double meaning in the last
remark. Filled with the gloomy conviction that he was bringing a silent
man to his hotel, he gloomily surveyed the mountain sides. There