s
rushing hither and thither about the platform like half-world shades. A
score of voices dinned into my ears as two score hands grabbed at my
valise and shoved me and dragged me.

"The Desert Hotel. Best in the West. This way, sir."

"Buffalo Hump Corral! The Buffalo Hump! Free drinks at the Buffalo Hump."

"Vamos, all o' you. Leave the gent to me. I've had him before. Mike's
Place for you, eh? Come along."

"The Widow's Cafe! That's yore grub pile, gent. All you can eat for two
bits."

A deep voice boomed, stunning me.

"The Queen, the Queen! Bath for every room. Individual towels. The Queen,
the Queen, she's clean, she's clean."

It was a magnificent bass, full toned as an organ, issuing, likewise as
out of a reed, from a swart dwarf scarcely higher than my waist. The word
"bath," with the promise of "individual towels," won me over. Something
must be done, anyway, to get rid of these importunate runners. Thereupon I
acquiesced, "All right, my man. The Queen," and surrendering my bag to his
hairy paw I trudged by his guidance. The solicitations instantly ceased as
if in agreement with some code.

We left the station platform and went ploughing up a street over shoetops
with the impalpable dust and denoted by tents and white-coated shacks
sparsely bordering. The air was breezeless and suffocatingly loaded with
that dust not yet deposited. The noises as from a great city swelled
strident: shouts, hammerings, laughter, rumble of vehicles, cracking of
lashes, barkings of dogs innumerable--betokening a thriving mart of
industry. But although pedestrians streamed to and fro, the men in motley
of complexions and costumes, the women, some of them fashionably dressed,
with skirts eddying furiously; and wagons rolled, horses cantered, and
from right and left merchants and hawksters seemed to be calling their
wares, of city itself I could see only the veriest husk.

The majority of the buildings were mere canvas-faced up for a few feet,
perhaps, with sheet iron or flimsy boards; interspersed there were a few
wooden structures, rough and unpainted; and whereas several of the
housings were large, none was more than two stories--and when now and
again I thought that I had glimpsed a substantial stone front a closer
inspection told me that the stones were imitation, forming a veneer of the
sheet iron or of stenciled pine. Indeed, not a few of the upper stories,
viewed from an unfavorable angle, proved to be only thin para