It was half-past five, and the room was still crowded, though that many had come and gone was attested by the pools of coffee on the zinc tables, the bread crumbs on the floor, and the great piles of dirty dishes. In a mining camp five o’clock is the fashionable supper hour, and he who comes late has cause to rue it. Loring and his companion cleared places for themselves, and after the necessary preliminaries of wiping their cracked plates on their sleeves, and obtaining their share from the great bowl of stew in the center of the table, they proceeded to eat in businesslike silence. There had been a time when such surroundings would have taken away Stephen’s appetite, but that was far away. The proprietor walked frequently up and down the room, answering mildly the contumely heaped upon the food. He carried a large bucket from which he replenished the coffee cups. Stephen quickly reached the dessert stage of the meal, and the proprietor set that course before him. It consisted of two very shiny canned peaches, floating in a dubious juice. The man who owned the eating house was of a quiet, depressed nature developed by years of endeavor to please boarders’ appetites at one dollar a day and make a profit of seventy-five cents. Ordinarily dessert consisted of one canned peach. Loring’s double allowance was a silent tribute to the fact that he did not rail at the food as did the others, and to the fact that once, when the purveyor had “spread himself” and served canned oysters, Stephen had thanked him. This had been the third time that the man had been thanked in all his life, and he stowed it away in his strange placid brain. When Stephen had finished his meal, he rose and joined the group of men, who, as customary after supper, were lounging on the steps. The proprietor, wearing his usual apologetic smile, soon joined them. “Pretty good supper, boys?” he remarked tentatively. Some one in the crowd moaned drearily. “Say, I know what good food is. I used to eat up at the Needles, at a place so swell they give Mexicans pie. Reg’lar sort of Harvey house, that was.” The proprietor, still smiling, sadly withdrew, and the crowd returned to its former occupations: commenting on the thin ponies of the Mexicans who galloped by, and trying to catch the eyes of the señoritas as they strolled past, arm in arm, seemingly stolid alike to the attentions and to the jests of the men. Many of the Indians, who had been brought from the San Carlos Reservation to work on the railway grade, were in camp to make their simple purchases of supplies. Stephen noticed with disgust the way the braves sat astride their ponies with indolent grace, while beside them walked the squaws, with the papooses slung in blankets over their shoulders. “Good example of the ‘noble redman,’ isn’t it!” he exclaimed to McKay.