Claire was surprised to find a warm, rather comfortable all-night lunch room, called the Alaska Café, with a bright-eyed man of twenty-five in charge. He nodded in a friendly way, and made haste with her order of two ham-and-egg sandwiches. She felt adventurous. She polished her knife and fork on a napkin, as she had seen people do in lunches along the way. A crowd of three rubbed their noses against the front window to stare at the strange girl in town, but she ignored them, and they drifted away. The lunchman was cordial: "At a hotel, ma'am? Which one? Gee, not the Tavern?" "Why yes. Is there another?" "Sure. First-rate one, two blocks over, one up." "The woman said the Tavern was the only hotel." "Oh, she's an old sour-face. Don't mind her. Just bawl her out. What's she charging you for a room?" "Three dollars." "Per each? Gee! Well, she sticks tourists anywheres from one buck to three. Natives get by for fifty cents. She's pretty fierce, but she ain't a patch on her husband. He comes from Spokane--nobody knows why--guess he was run out. He takes some kind of dope, and he cheats at rummy." "But why does the town stand either of them? Why do you let them torture innocent people? Why don't you put them in the insane hospital, where they belong?" "That's a good one!" her friend chuckled. But he saw it only as a joke. She thought of moving her father to the good hotel, but she hadn't the strength. Claire Boltwood, of Brooklyn Heights, went through the shanty streets of Pellago, Montana, at one A.M. carrying a sandwich in a paper bag which had recently been used for salted peanuts, and a red rubber hot-water bag filled with water at the Alaska Café. At the Tavern she hastened past the office door. She made her father eat his sandwich; she teased him and laughed at him till the hot-water bag had relieved his chill-pinched back; she kissed him boisterously, and started for her own room, at the far end of the hall. The lights were off. She had to feel her way, and she hesitated at the door of her room before she entered. She imagined voices, creeping footsteps, people watching her from a distance. She flung into the room, and when the kindled lamp showed her familiar traveling bag, she felt safer. But once she was in bed, with the sheet down as far as possible over the loathly red comforter, the quiet rustled and snapped about her, and she could not relax. Sinking into sleep seemed slipping into danger, and a dozen times she started awake. But only slowly did she admit to herself that she actually did hear a fumbling, hear the knob of her door turning. "W-who's there?" "It's me, lady. The landlord. Brought you the hot water." "Thanks so much, but I don't need it now." "Got something else for you. Come to the door. Don't want to holler and wake ev'body up." At the door she said timorously, "Nothing else I want, thank you. D-don't bother me."