"All right, now, ma'am?" Pete Timmons said, picking, up her valise.
The girl nodded, and together they went up the rude stairs to her room
where Timmons paused at the door.
"Well, I'm glad you're here," he said, moving away. "We've been
waitin' for you to show. I may be wrong, ma'am, but I'd bet my belt
that you're the lady that's been expected by Ned Beaton."
"You're mistaken," she replied shortly.
As she heard him clatter down the stairs, Miss Stella Donovan of the
New York _Star_ knew that her visit would not be in vain.
CHAPTER VIII: A GANG OF ENEMIES
The miner waited, leaning against the desk. His eyes had followed the
slender figure moving after the rotund Timmons up the uncarpeted stairs
until it had vanished amid the shadows of the second story. He smiled
quietly in imagination of her first astonished view of the interior of
room eighteen, and recalled to mind a vivid picture of its
adornments--the bare wood walls, the springless bed, the crack-nosed
pitcher standing disconsolate in a blue wash-basin of tin; the little
round mirror in a once-gilt frame with a bullet-hole through its
centre, and the strip of dingy rag-carpet on the floor--all this
suddenly displayed by the yellowish flame of a small hand-lamp left
sitting on the window ledge.
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