d the Mississippi, many of them
schemers, most of them dreamers ready to sacrifice all the endearments
of civilization for the romance of pioneering in the West, beyond the
limits of the world as defined by the map of the railroad-line over
which they had come.

CHAPTER II

GUESTS FOR THE METROPOLE

To Comanche there came that August afternoon, when it was wearing down
to long shadows, a mixed company, drawn from the far places and the
middle distances east of Wyoming. This company had assembled in the
course of the day's acquaintance on the last long, dusty run into the
land of expectations.

At dawn these people had left their comfortable sleeping-cars at
Chadron, in the Nebraska desert, to change to the train of archaic
coaches which transported the land-seekers across the last stretch of
their journey. Before that morning the company had been pursuing its way
as individual parts--all, that is, with the exception of the miller's
wife, from near Boston; the sister of the miller's wife, who was a widow
and the mother of June; and June, who was pasty and off-color, due to
much fudge and polishing in a young ladies' school.

These three traveled together, as three of such close relationship
naturally should travel. The widow was taking June to Wyoming to see if
she could put some marketable color in her cheeks, and the miller's wife
was going along for a belated realization, at least partially, of
youthful yearnings.

Since seventeen the miller's wife had longed to see the sun set behind a
mountain with snow upon it, and to see a cowboy with dust on his
shoulders, like the cowboys of the western drama, come riding out of the
glow, a speck at first, and on, and on, until he arrived where she
waited and flung himself from his panting horse, neckerchief awry, spurs
tinkling, and swept off his broad hat in salute. Beyond that point she
had not dared to go since marrying the miller, who had dust enough on
_his_ shoulders--unromantic dust, unromantic shoulders, goodness knows!
But that was her picture, all framed in the gold of her heart. She
wanted to see the mountain with the sun behind it, and the cowboy, and
all, and then she could sigh, and go back to the miller and near Boston
to await the prosaic end.

For all of her thirty-eight years Mrs. Dorothy Mann was shy in
proportion as her miller husband, the widely known J. Milton Mann was
bold. That he was a hard-mailed knight in the lists of business, and
t