There had been "sheep queens" in the stockyards before--raucous-voiced, domineering, sexless, inflated to absurdity by their success--but none with Kate's personal attractiveness and her utter lack of self-consciousness. As she walked about on the long platform beside the pens, tall, straight, picturesque, with her free movements, her wide gestures when she used her hands, together with her quiet air of authority, she was the most typical and interesting figure that had come out of the far west for a long time. When the last thing was done that required her personal attention, Kate went to a nearby hotel recommended by one of the employees of the stockyard. It was third-rate and shabby, unpretentious even in its prime, but it looked imposing to Kate, who never had seen anything better than the Prouty House. The loose tiling clacked as she walked across the office to the clerk's desk. That person eyed her dubiously as she laid the flour sack containing her belongings on the counter and registered. He saw in Kate only a woman peculiarly dressed, with a tanned and not too clean face, dishevelled hair, weary-eyed, and alone at a late hour. He missed altogether the indefinable atmosphere of character and substantiality which a more discerning and experienced person would have recognized at once. "Baggage?" curtly, as she returned him the pen. She indicated the grimy flour sack. A supercilious eyebrow went up. "You'll have to pay in advance. Six bits." Kate reddened. "Is that customary, or because you don't like my looks?" Taking umbrage at the asperity of her tone, he replied impudently: "Well--I don't know you from a crow, do I?" Kate's eyes flashed. "You will before I leave Omaha." He laughed incredulously as he took a key from the rack. Kate followed him up the dirty stairway through a dingy hall to a still dingier room in the back of the house. Long and narrow, it looked like a kalsomined cave illumined by a lightning bug in a bottle when he turned the electric switch. She was too tired, however, to be critical and in her utter weariness lost consciousness as soon as her head touched the pillow and slept dreamlessly until the dawn came feebly through the coarse lace curtain that, stiff and gray with dust, hung at the one window of the room. She rubbed her eyes and looked in bewilderment at the unfamiliar surroundings. Then she remembered, and the trip with all its attendant circumstances came back. She speculated as to the probable amount the sheep had shrunken on the way, how they would compare with other consignments in the yards, whether the market conditions were favorable or otherwise, what the commission agents whom she had known through correspondence for many years would be like.