“You gents is sure right welcome,” the one-legged proprietor went on, having paused a moment to listen to the wind howling through the narrow pass and battling at his door and windows.  “I got plenty to eat an’ more’n plenty to drink, same as usual.  But when it comes to sleepin’, well, you got to make floors an’ chairs an’ tables do.  You see this here little shower has filled me all up.  The Lew Yates place up the river got itself pretty well washed out; Lew’s young wife an’ ol’ mother-in-law,” and Poke’s voice was properly modified, “got scared clean to pieces.  Not bein’ used to our ways out here,” he added brightly.  “Any way they’ve got the spare bed room.  An’ my room an’ Ma’s ... well, Ma’s got a real bad cold an’ she’s camped there for the night.  But, shucks, boys, what’s the odds, when there’s fire in the fire place an’ grub in the grub box an’ as fine a line of licker as you can find any place I know of.  An’ a deck or two of cards an’ the bones to rattle for them that’s anxious to make or break quick ...  Hap Smith ought to been here before now.  You wouldn’t suppose....”

He broke off and looked at those of the faces which had been turned his way.  His thought was plain to read, at least for those who understood recent local conditions.  Hap Smith had been driving the stage over the mountains for only something less than three weeks; which is to say since the violent taking off of his predecessor, Bill Varney.

Before any one spoke the dozen men in the room had had ample time to consider this suggestion.  One or two of them glanced up at the clock swinging its pendulum over the chimney piece.  Then they went on with what they were doing, glancing through old newspapers, dealing at cards, smoking or just sitting and staring at nothing in particular.

“The last week has put lots of water in all the cricks,” offered old man Adams from his place by the fire.  “Then with this cloud-bust an’ downpour today, it ain’t real nice travellin’.  That would be about all that’s holdin’ Hap up.  An’ I’m tellin’ you why:  Did you ever hear a man tell of a stick-up party on a night like this?  No, sir!  These here stick-up gents got more sense than that; they’d be settin’ nice an’ snug an’ dry like us fellers, right now.”

As usual, old man Adams had stated a theory with emphasis and utterly without any previous reflection, being a positive soul, but never a brilliant.  And, again quite as usual, a theory stated was naturally to be combated with more or less violence.  Out of the innocent enough statement there grew a long, devious argument.  An argument which was at its height and evincing no signs of ever getting anywhere at all, when from the night without came the rattle of wheels, the jingle of harness chains and Hap Smith’s voice shouting out the tidings of his tardy arrival.