ffering to lay bets that nobody in the mess would draw a number
below five hundred. There were no takers. Then they offered to bet that
all in the mess would draw under five hundred. Mrs. Reed rebuked them
for their gambling spirit, which, she said, was rampant in Comanche,
like a plague.

CHAPTER VI

THE DRAWING

As has been previously said, one must go fast and far to come to a place
where there is neither a Hotel Metropole nor a newspaper. Doubtless
there are communities of civilized men on the North American continent
where there is neither, but Comanche was not one of them.

In Comanche the paper was a daily. Its editor was a single-barreled
grafter who wore a green mohair coat and dyed whiskers. His office and
establishment occupied an entire twelve-by-sixteen tent; the name of the
paper was _The Chieftain_.

_The Chieftain_ had been one of the first enterprises of Comanche. It
got there ahead of the first train, arriving in a wagon, fully equipped.
The editor had an old zinc cut of a two-storied brick business house on
a corner, which he had run with a grocery-store advertisement when he
was getting out a paper in Tulsa, Oklahoma. This he now made use of with
impressive effect and inspiring display of his cheerful confidence in
his own future and that of the town where, like a blowing seed of
cottonwood, he had found lodgment.

He ran this cut in every issue at the top of what would have been his
editorial column if there had been time for him to write one, with these
words:

FUTURE HOME OF _THE CHIEFTAIN_ ON THE
CORNER THIS PAPER NOW OCCUPIES,
AS DESIGNED BY THE EDITOR AND
OWNER, J. WALTER MONG

From the start that Editor Mong was making in Comanche his dream did not
appear at all unreasonable. Everybody in the place advertised, owing to
some subtle influence of which Mr. Mong was master, and which is known
to editors of his brand wherever they are to be found. If a business man
had the shield of respectability to present to all questioners, he
advertised out of pride and civic spirit; if he had a past, J. Walter
Mong had a nose, sharpened by long training in picking up such scents;
and so he advertised out of expediency.

That being the way matters stood, _The Chieftain_ carried very little
but advertisements. They paid better than news, and news could wait its
turn, said the editor, until he settled down ste