Page:Peak and Prairie (1894).pdf/191

 The new-comer stepped up to the bar-tender.

"Do you know whether a miner named Conrad Christie is in there?" he asked.

"I guess likely enough," was the reply. "Mr. Christie is one of our regular patrons. Won't you take a drink, Mister?"

"No;" said Simon, shortly.

"No? Ain't that ruther a pity? But pass right in, Sir. Any friend of Mr. Christie's is welcome here."

Whereupon Mr. Christie's "friend" passed through the door, into the long, narrow "Opera House." It was a dirty, cheerless hole, in spite of the brilliance of many oil lamps, shining among the flimsy decorations. At the end of the tunnel-shaped room was a rude stage, festooned with gaudy, squalid hangings, beneath which a painted siren was singing a song which Simon did not listen to. The floor of the auditorium was filled with chairs and tables in disorderly array, the occupants of which seemed to be paying more attention to their liquor and their cards than to the cracked voice of the songstress. There was a rattling of glasses, the occasional clink of money, frequent shrill laughs and deeper-chested oaths and guffaws; the fumes of beer and whisky mingled with the heavy canopy of