Six Feet Four | Page 3

operations as smoking, drinking, newspaper reading or card playing.
They looked at her gravely, speculatively and with frankly unhidden
interest. One man who had laid a wet coat aside donned it again swiftly
and surreptitiously. Another in awkward fashion, as she passed close to
him, half rose and then sank back into his chair. Still others merely
narrowed the gaze that was bent upon her steadily.
She went straight to the fireplace, threw off her wraps and extended her
hands to the blaze. So for a moment she stood, her shoulders stirring to
the shiver which ran down her whole body. Then she turned her head a
little and for the first time took in all of the rude appointments of the
room.
"Oh!" she gasped. "I...."
"It's all right, Miss," said Poke Drury, swinging toward her, his hand
lifted as though to stop one in full flight. "You see ... just that end there
is the bar room," he explained nodding at her reassuringly. "The middle
of the room here is the ... the parlour; an' down at that end, where the
long table is, that's the dinin' room. I ain't ever got aroun' to the
partitions yet, but I'm goin' to some day. An' ... Ahem!"
He had said it all and, all things considered, had done rather well with
an impossible job. The clearing of the throat and a glare to go with it
were not for the startled girl but for that part of the room where the bar
and card tables were being used.
"Oh," said the girl again. And then, turning her back upon the bar and
so allowing the firelight to add to the sparkle of her eyes and the flush
on her cheeks, "Of course. One mustn't expect everything. And please
don't ask the gentlemen to ... to stop whatever they are doing on my
account. I'm quite warm now." She smiled brightly at her host and
shivered again.
"May I go right to my room?"
In the days when Poke Drury's road house stood lone and aloof from

the world in Big Pine Flat, very little of the world from which such as
Poke Drury had retreated had ever peered into these mountain-bound
fastnesses; certainly less than few women of the type of this girl had
ever come here in the memory of the men who now, some boldly and
some shyly, regarded her drying herself and seeking warmth in front of
the blazing fire. True, at the time there were in the house three others of
her sex. But they were ... different.
"May I go right to my room?" she repeated as the landlord stood gaping
at her rather foolishly. She imagined that he had not heard, being a little
deaf ... or that, possibly, the poor chap was a trifle slow witted. And
again she smiled on him kindly and again he noted the shiver
bespeaking both chill and fatigue.
But to Poke Drury there had come an inspiration. Not much of one,
perhaps, yet he quickly availed himself of it. Hanging in a dusty corner
near the long dining table, was an old and long disused guest's book,
the official road house register. Drury's wandering eye lighted upon it.
"If you'll sign up, Miss," he suggested, "I'll go have Ma get your room
ready."
And away he scurried on his crutch, casting a last look over his
shoulder at his ruder male guests.
The girl went hastily as directed and sat down at the table, her back to
the room. The book she lifted down from its hanging place; there was a
stub of pencil tied to the string. She took it stiffly into her fingers and
wrote, "Winifred Waverly." Her pencil in the space reserved for the
signer's home town, she hesitated. Only briefly, however. With a little
shrug, she completed the legend, inscribing swiftly, "Hill's Corners."
Then she sat still, feeling that many eyes were upon her and waited the
return of the road house keeper. When finally he came back into the
room, his slow hesitating gait and puckered face gave her a suspicion of
the truth.
"I'm downright sorry, Miss," he began lamely. "Ma's got somethin' ...
bad cold or pneumonia ... an' she won't budge. There's only one more

bed room an' Lew Yates's wife has got one cot an Lew's mother-in-law
has got the other. An' they won't budge. An' ..."
He ended there abruptly.
"I see," said the girl wearily. "There isn't any place for me."
"Unless," offered Drury without enthusiasm and equally without
expectation of his offer being of any great value, "you'd care to crawl in
with Ma ..."
"No, thank you!" said Miss Waverly hastily. "I can sit up somewhere;
after all it won't be long until morning and