and a rather long and narrow passenger and freight depot. The town lay a little apart, and I could not make out its size. There were a hundred or more men waiting for the train, and one of them took the two mail-sacks in a wheelbarrow and went away toward the lights of the houses. There were a lot of mules and wagons and scrapers and other tools of a gang of railroad graders near the station; also some tents in which the men lived; these men were waiting for the train with the others, and talked so loud and made such a disturbance that it drowned out all other noises.

The train was left right on the track, and the engine put in the roundhouse, after which Burrdock took me over town to the hotel. It was called the Headquarters House, and the proprietor’s name was Sours. After I got a cold supper he showed me to my room. The second story was divided into about twenty rooms, the partitions being lathed but 6 not yet plastered. It made walls very easy to talk through, and, where the cracks happened to match, as they seemed to mostly, they weren’t hard to look through. I thought it was a good deal like sleeping in a squirrel-cage.

The railroad men that I had seen at the station had been working on an extension of the grade to the west, on which the rails were to be laid the next spring. They had pushed on ten miles, but, as the government had stopped making a fuss, the company had decided to do no more that season, and the train I came up on brought the paymaster with the money to pay the graders for their summer’s work; so they all got drunk. There were some men from Billings in town, too. They were on their way east with a band of four hundred Montana ponies, which they had rounded up for the night just south of town. Two of them stayed to hold the drove, and the rest came into town, also to get drunk. They had good luck in doing this, and fought with the graders. I heard two or three shots soon after I went to bed, and thought of my mother. 7

Some time late in the night I was awakened by a great rumpus in the hotel, and made out from what I heard through the laths that some men were looking for somebody. They were going from room to room, and soon came into mine, tearing down the sheet which was hung up for a door. They crowded in and came straight to the bed, and the leader, a big man with a crooked nose, seized me by the ear as if he were taking hold of a bootstrap. I sat up, and another poked a lantern in my face.

“That’s him,” said one of them.

“No, he was older,” said another.

“He looks like he would steal a dog, anyhow,” said the man with the lantern. “Bring him along, Pike.”

“No,” said the man who had hold of my ear, “he ain’t much more’n a boy–we’re looking for grown men to-night.”

Then they went out, and I could feel my ear drawing back into place as if it were made of rubber. But it never got quite back, and has always been a game ear to this day, with a kind of a lop to it.

Sours told me in the morning that they 8 were looking for the man that stole their dog, though he said he didn’t think they had ever had a dog. Pike, he said, had come out as a grader, but it had been a long time since he had done any work.

I took a look around town after breakfast and found forty or fifty houses, most of them stores or other places of business, on one street running north and south. There were a few, but not many, houses scattered about beyond the street. Some of the buildings had canvas roofs, and there were a good many tents and covered wagons in which people lived. The whole town had been built since the railroad came through two months before. There was a low hill called Frenchman’s Butte a quarter of a mile north of town. I climbed it to get a view of the country, but could see only about a dozen settlers’ houses, also just built.

The country was a vast level prairie except to the north, where there were a few small lakes, with a little timber around them, and some coteaux, or low hills, beyond. The grass was dried up and gray. I thought I could make out a low range of hills to the 9 west, where I supposed the Missouri River was. On my way back to town a man told me that a big colony of settlers were expected to arrive soon, and that Track’s End had been built partly on the strength of the business these people would bring. I never saw the colony.

When I got back to the hotel Sours said to me:

“Young man, don’t you want a job?”

I told him I should be glad of something to do.

“The man that has been taking care of my barn has just gone on the train,” continued Sours. “He got homesick for the States, and lit out and never said boo till half an hour before train-time. If you want the job I’ll give you twenty-five dollars a month and your board.”

“I’ll try it a month,” I said; “but I’ll probably be going back myself before winter.”

“That’s it,” exclaimed Sours. “Everybody’s going back before winter. I guess there won’t be nothing left here next winter but jack-rabbits and snowbirds.”

I had hoped for something better than 10 working in a stable, but my money was so near gone that I did not think it a good time to stand around and act particular. Besides, I liked horses so much that the job rather pleased me, after all.

Toward evening Sours came to me and said he wished I would spend the night in the barn and keep awake most of the time, as he was afraid it might be broken into by some of the graders. They were acting worse than ever. There was no town government, but a man named Allenham had some time before been elected city marshal at a mass-meeting. During the day he appointed some deputies to help him maintain order.

At about ten o’clock I shut up the barn, put out my lantern, and sat down in a little room in one corner which was used for an office. The town was noisy, but nobody came near the barn, which was back of the hotel and out of sight from the street. Some time after midnight I heard low voices outside and crept to a small open window. I could make out the forms of some men under a shed back of a store across a narrow alley. Soon I heard two shots in the street, and then a man came 11 running through the alley with another right after him. As the first passed, a man stepped out from under the shed. The man in pursuit stopped and said:

“Now, I want Jim, and there’s no use of you fellows trying to protect him.” It was Allenham’s voice.

There was a report of a revolver so close that it made me wink. The man who had come from under the shed had fired pointblank at Allenham. By the flash I saw that the man was Pike.

I was too frightened at first to move, and stood at the window staring into the darkness like a fool. I heard the men scramble over a fence and run off. Then I ran out to where Allenham lay. He made no answer when I spoke to him. I went on and met two of the deputies coming into the alley. I told them what I had seen.

“Wake up folks in the hotel,” said one of the men; then they hurried along. I soon had everybody in the hotel down-stairs with my shouting. In a minute or two they brought in Allenham, and the doctor began to work over him. The whole town was soon on hand, and it was decided to descend on the graders’ camp in force. Twenty or