litary band from Medicine Bend, carrying more gold on their lacings and
their horns than the local musicians carried in the savings bank.

By the time the noon whistle blew at the roundhouse every trail and road
into Sleepy Cat showed dust--some of them an abundance. The hotel was
naturally the center of attraction, and Main Street looked like a
Frontier Day crowd. The Reservation, too, sent a delegation for the
occasion and mingling in the jostling but good-natured crowd were chiefs,
bucks and squaws, who, in a riot of war bonnets, porcupine waistcoats,
gay trappings and formal blankets, lent yellows and reds and blues to the
scene. All entrances to the Mountain House were decorated and a stream
of visitors poured in and out, with congratulations for Tenison, who
received them at the bar in the big billiard hall opening on Main Street.

By evening the hall presented an extraordinary scene. Every element that
went to make up the shifting life of the frontier could be picked from
the crowd that filled the room. Most numerous and most aggressive in the
spectacle, cattlemen and range riders in broad hats, leathern jackets and
mottled waistcoats, booted and spurred and rolling in their choppy steps
on pointed heels, moved everywhere--to and from the bar, around the pool
tables and up and down the broad flight of stairs leading to the second
floor gambling rooms. At the upper end of the long bar there was less
crowding than nearer the street door and at this upper end three men,
somewhat apart from others, while nominally drinking, stood in confab.
First among them, Harry Van Horn was noticeable. His strong face, with
its hunting nose, reflected his active mind, and as he spoke or listened
to one or the other of his companions--standing between them--his lively
eyes flashed in the overhead light. On his left stood Tom Stone, foreman
of the Doubleday ranch. His head, carried habitually forward, gave him
the appearance of always looking out from under his eyebrows; and the
natural expression of his face, bordering on the morose, was never
lighted by more than a strained smile--a smile that suggested a grin,
that puckered the corners of his eyes and drew hard furrows down his
cheeks, but evidenced nothing akin to even the skim-milk of human
kindness.

On Van Horn's left stood an older man of massive features, the owner of
the largest ranch in the north country, Barb Doubleday.

Miners from Thief River, with frank, fe