The two long tables occupying the centre of the room were already well filled with hungry men indiscriminately attired, not a few coatless and with rolled-up sleeves, as though they had hurried in from work at the first sound of the gong.  These paid little attention to her entrance, except to stare curiously as she crossed the floor in Timmons’s wake, and immediately afterward again devoted themselves noisily to their food.

A waitress, a red-haired, slovenly girl, with an impediment in her speech, took her order and disappeared in the direction of the kitchen, and Miss Donovan discreetly lifted her eyes to observe the man sitting nearly opposite.  He was not prepossessing, yet she instantly recognised his type, and the probability that he would address her if the slightest opportunity occurred.  Beneath lowered lashes she studied the fellow—­the prominent jaw and thick lips shadowed by a closely trimmed moustache; the small eyes beneath overhanging brows; the heavy hair brushed back from a rather low forehead, and the short, stubby fingers grasping knife and fork.

If he is a drummer, she thought, his line would be whisky; then, almost as suddenly, it occurred to her that perhaps he may prove to be Ned Beaton, and she drew in her breath sharply, determined to break the ice.

The waitress spread out the various dishes before her, and she glanced at them hopelessly.  As she lifted her gaze she met that of her vis-a-vis fairly, and managed to smile.

“Some chuck,” he said in an attempt at good-fellowship, “but not to remind you of the Waldorf-Astoria.”

“I should say not,” she answered, testing one of her dishes cautiously.  “But why associate me with New York?”

“You can’t hide those things in a joint like this.  Besides, that’s the way you registered.”

“Oh, so you’ve looked me up.”

“Well, naturally,” he explained, as though with a dim idea that an explanation was required, “I took a squint at the register; then I became more interested, for I’m from little old New York myself.”

“You are?  Selling goods on the road away out here?”

“Not me; that ain’t my line at all.  I’ve got a considerable mining deal on up the canon.  I’ll earn every dollar I’ll make, though, eating this grub.  Believe me, I’d like to be back by the Hudson right now.”

“You’ve been here some time, then?”

“’Bout a month altogether, but not here in Haskell all that time.  When did you leave New York?”

“Oh, more than a week ago,” she lied gracefully.

He stroked his moustache.

“Then I suppose you haven’t much late New York news?  Nothing startling, I mean?”

“No; only what has been reported in the Western papers.  I do not recall anything particularly interesting.”  She dropped her eyes to her plate and busied herself with a piece of tough beef.  “The usual murders, of course, and things of that kind.”