CHAPTER VII
THB " BRONCO KID'S "  AVESDROPPING
IATE in July it grows dark as midnight approaches, Lso that the many lights from doorway and window seem less garish and strange than they do a month earlier. In the Northern there was good business doing. The new bar fixtures, which had cost a king's ransom, or represented the one night's losings of a Klondike millionaire, shone rich, dark, and enticing, while the cut glass sparkled with iridescent hues, reflecting, in a measure, the prismatic moods, the dancing spirits of the crowd that crushed past, halting at the gambling games, or patronizing the theatre in the rear. The old bar furniture, brought down by dog team from ' Up River," was established at the rear extremity of the long building, just inside the entrance to the dancehall, where patrons of the drama might, with a modi. cum of delay and inconvenience, quaff as deeply of the beaker as of the ballet.
Now, however, the show had closed, the hall had been cleared of chairs and canvas, exposing a glassy, tempting surface, and the orchestra had moved to the stage. They played a rollicking, blood-stirring twostep, while the floor swam with dancers.
At certain intervals the musicians worked feverishly up to a crashing crescendo, supported by the voices of 68