Another hour had passed when two young women drove up in an expensive late-model car.  They parked by the store and got out looking somewhat uncertain.  A man stood up from his place at the bar.  Shading his eyes with one hand he raised the other in a wave of recognition.  "I'm Bob-o," he called in a bland, hopeful voice.  The table was silent for a moment. Bob-o was a young miner who had recently advertised for a mail-order woman companion in response to the community's chronic shortage of young single women.  Women selected from among the 150 respondents had begun arriving, staying a few days to check things out before moving on.

"I'm Bob-o," a second man leaped to his feet and called convincingly.

"No, I'm Bob-o," a third protested before the whole table was up crossing the road shouting and moaning, "I'm Bob-o," to the women, who were, if possible, even more mystified than if they had heard of Bob-o, which they had not.

As the shadows grew deeper and longer, the crowd thinned out in stages.  Older men and couples with children left first followed in an hour by a half dozen teen-age boys and girls paired up on motorcycles.  They had spent the day scouting pools for resting salmon and were off with lines and snag hooks.  Young single miners with cold cabins waiting hung on to the end 

The moon was high and owls were calling from the tall trees when Cyclone Bob, a local semi-professional salmon snagger, drove through the deserted settlement on his way back to work.  He was thinking of salmon and wondering if the new game warden would be patrolling.  The low yellow light of propane and kerosene lamps marked faintly the houses that periodically swam up from the sea of fir and madrone trees in the margins of his headlights.  And all along his route people recognizing the sound of the solitary vehicle remarked with a familiar irony that there must be fish in the river tonight.

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