They drove along for some distance without speaking. The girl was too happy and the half-breed too preoccupied to talk.
"Mike," she commanded suddenly after a time, "quit that smoking. I don't like it."
The half-breed hesitated, narrowing his brow, and looking straight ahead. Then he silently knocked the ashes from his pipe and slipped it into his pocket. Molly's eyes flashed with triumphant amusement. The game had begun. After a time the sun sank into the dark hills, and the great shadow of Harney crept out of them.
The wagon rattled down a short incline to the broad, shallow bed of the Cheyenne. Molly turned it aside into a little grass plat.
"We'll camp here to-night," she announced.
"There is better water two mile further, on the trail, on Fall River," said Lafond, without moving.
"I said we'd camp here!" repeated the girl sharply.
The half-breed descended and began to unharness the horses.
The camp which was to be the scene of Lafond's operations and of the girl's anticipated triumphs, lay between Ragged Top and Tom Custer. It consisted of a double row of log cabins situated in the V of the deep ravine. The men generally ate in the long dining-room of the hotel, worked at prospecting in the hills, and spent their evenings in the centrally situated Little Nugget saloon, the property of Michaïl Lafond.
The night of the half-breed's arrival the usual crowd was carrying on the usual discussions on the usual subjects.
One fresh from the East entering the building would have been struck first with the strangeness of the room. It was long and low, and on three sides dark. Against the fourth wall was stretched tightly a white cotton sheet, imitating plaster, in front of which stood the bar. The bar was polished, narrow, with a foot rest in front and two towels hanging from metal clasps just under the projecting eaves of it. It had been brought in sections, by wagon, at considerable expense. Some three feet behind the bar, stretched a shelf of the same height, towel covered, on which stood four bottles in front of a little mirror. The shelf was piled symmetrically with glasses of all shapes--tumblers, ponies, fine-stemmed wineglasses--arranged in pyramids and squares. They glittered in the glare of the lamps, and the indirect light from the white sheet. A dim pink reflection was given back by the mirror--dim and pink because the glass was draped with pink mosquito bar. Overhead hung the sign which read, "To Trust is Bust."