axter saw Bucks first and spoke.

"I thought you were taking your sleep at this time," returned Bucks,
greeting him.

"So I should be," he replied, "but we are in trouble. Dan Baggs is to
take out the passenger train to-night, and no one can find him. He is
somewhere up here in one of these dives and has forgotten all about
his engine. It is enough to set a man crazy to have to run trains with
such cattle. Bucks, suppose you take one side of the street while I
take the other, and help me hunt him up."

"What shall we do?"

"Look in every door all the way down-street till we find him. If we
don't get the fellow on his engine, there will be no train out till
midnight. Say nothing to anybody and answer no questions; just find
him."

Baxter started down the right-hand side of the long street and Bucks
took the left-hand side. It was queer business for Bucks, and the
sights that met him at every turn were enough to startle one stouter
than he. He controlled his disgust and ignored the questions sometimes
hurled at him by drunken men and women, intent only on getting his eye
on the irresponsible Baggs.

Half-way down toward the square he reached a dance hall. The doors
were spread wide open and from within came a din of bad music,
singing, and noise of every kind.

Bucks entered the place with some trepidation. In the rear of the
large room was a raised platform extending the entire width of it. At
one end of the platform stood a piano which a man pounded incessantly
and fiercely. Other performers were singing and dancing to entertain a
motley and disorderly audience seated in a still more disorderly array
before them.

At the right of the room a long bar stretched from the street back as
far as the stage, and standing in front of this, boisterous groups of
men were smoking and drinking, or wrangling in tipsy fashion. The
opposite side of the big room was given over to gambling devices of
every sort, and this space was filled with men sitting about small
tables and others sitting and standing along one side of long tables,
at each of which one man was dealing cards, singly, out of a metal
case held in his hand. Other men clustered about revolving wheels
where, oblivious of everything going on around them, they watched with
feverish anxiety a ball thrown periodically into the disc by the man
operating the wheel.

Bucks walked slowly down the room the full length of the bar, scanning
each group of men as he passed.