"Thank you; I'll see. I do not know yet the length of my stay."

"Are ye yere on business?"

"Partly; but it may require only a few days."

"Waal, if yer do stay over, maybe I kin fix yer up a bit more
comfortable-like. Thar'll be some drummers a goin' out to-day, I
reckon."

"Thank you very much; I'll let you know what I decide the moment I know
myself. Is that a hunting-dog?"

"Bones mostly," he responded gloomily, but stroking the animal's head.
"Leastwise, he ain't been trained none. I just naturally like a darg
round fer company--they sorter seem homelike."

She passed out into the bright sunshine, and clear mountain air. The
board-walk ended at the corner of the hotel, but a narrow cinder-patch
continued down that side of the street for some distance. The houses
were scattered, the vacant spaces between grown up to weeds, and more
or less ornamented by tin cans, and as she advanced she encountered
only two pedestrians--a cowboy, so drunk that he hung desperately to
the upper board of a fence in order to let her pass, staring at her as
if she was some vision, and a burly fellow in a checked suit, with some
mail in his hand, who stopped after they had passed each other, and
gazed back at her as though more than ordinarily interested. From the
hotel stoop he watched until she vanished within the general store,
which contained the post-office.