“She ain’t exactly gone to bed,” giggled the garrulous old man Adams, “bein’ as there ain’t no bed for her to go to.  Ma Drury is inhabitin’ one right now, while the other two is pre-empted by Lew Yates’ wife an’ his mother-in-law.”

“Pshaw,” muttered Hap Smith.  “That ain’t right.  She’s an awful nice girl an’ she’s clean tuckered out an’ cold an’ wet.  She’d ought to have a bed to creep into.”  His eyes reproachfully trailed off to Poke Drury.  The one-legged man made a grimace and shrugged.

“I can’t drag Lew’s folks out, can I?” he demanded.  “An’ I’d like to see the jasper as would try pryin’ Ma loose from the covers right now.  It can’t be did, Hap.”

Hap sighed, seeming to agree, and sighing reached out a big hairy hand for the bottle.

“She’s an awful nice girl, jus’ the same,” he repeated with head-nodding emphasis.  And then, feeling no doubt that he had done his chivalrous duty, he tossed off his liquor, stretched his thick arms high over his head, squared his shoulders comfortably in his blue flannel shirt and grinned in wide good humour.  “This here campoody of yours ain’t a terrible bad place to be right bow, Poke, old scout.  Not a bad place a-tall.”

“You said twice, she was nice,” put in old man Adams, his bleary, red rimmed ferret eyes gimleting at the stage driver.  “But you ain’t said who she was?  Now...”

Hap Smith stared at him and chuckled.

“Ain’t that jus’ like Adams for you?” he wanted to know.  “Who is she, he says!  An’ here I been ridin’ alongside her all day an’ never once does it pop into my head to ask whether she minds the name of Daisy or Sweet Marie!”

“Name’s Winifred Waverly,” chirped up the old man.  “But a name don’t mean much; not in this end of the world least ways.  But us boys finds it kind of interestin’ how she hangs out to Dead Man’s Alley.  That bein’ kind of strange an’ ...”

“Poh!” snorted Hap Smith disdainfully.  “Her hang out in that little town of Hill’s Corners?  Seein’ as she ain’t ever been there, havin’ tol’ me so on the stage less’n two hours ago, what’s the sense of sayin’ a fool thing like that?  She ain’t the kind as dwells in the likes of that nest of polecats an’ sidewinders.  Poh!”

“Poh, is it?” jeered old man Adams tremulously.  “Clap your peep sight on that, Hap Smith.  Poh at me, will you?” and close up to the driver’s eyes he thrust the road house register with its newly pencilled inscription so close that Hap Smith dodged and was some time deciphering the brief legend.

“Beats me,” he grunted, when he had done.  He tossed the book to a table as a matter of no moment and shrugged.  “Anyways she’s a nice girl, I don’t care where she abides, so to speak.  An’ me an’ these other boys,” with a sweeping glance at the four of his recent male passengers, “is hungrier than wolves.  How about it, Poke?  Late hours, but considerin’ the kind of night the devil’s dealin’ we’re lucky to be here a-tall.  I could eat the hind leg off a ten year ol’ steer.”