l the
arrivals of all the days since the registration began, came down to see
the tenderfeet swallow their first impressions of the coming Eden.

The Hotel Metropole was the only public house in Comanche that
maintained a conveyance to meet travelers at the station, and that was
for the transportation of their baggage only. For a man will follow his
belongings and stick to them in one place as well as another, and the
proprietor of the Metropole was philosopher enough to know that. So his
men with the wagon grabbed all the baggage they could wrench from, lift
from under, or pry out of the grasp of travelers when they stepped off
the train.

The June party saw their possessions loaded into the wagon, under the
loud supervision of Sergeant Schaefer, who had been in that country
before and could be neither intimidated, out-sounded, nor bluffed. Then,
following their traveling agent-guide, they pushed through the crowds to
their quarters.

Fortunate, indeed, they considered themselves when they saw how matters
stood in Comanche. There seemed to be two men for every cot in the
place. Of women there were few, and June's mother shuddered when she
thought of what they would have been obliged to face if they hadn't been
so lucky as to get a tent to themselves.

"I never would have got off that train!" she declared. "No, I never
would have brought my daughter into any such unprotected place as
this!"

Mrs. Reed looked around her severely, for life was starting to lift its
head again in Comanche after the oppression of the afternoon's heat.

Mrs. Mann smiled. She was beginning to take a comprehensive account of
the distance between Wyoming and the town near Boston where the miller
toiled in the gloom of his mill.

"I think it's perfectly lovely and romantic!" said she.

Mrs. Reed received the outburst with disfavor.

"Remember your husband, Dorothy Ann!" warned she.

Dorothy Ann sighed, gently caressing the black bag which dangled upon
her slender arm.

"I do, Malvina," said she.

CHAPTER III

UNCONVENTIONAL BEHAVIOR

Their situation was somewhat beyond the seat of noisy business and
raucous-throated pleasure. Mrs. Reed, while living in an unending state
of shivers on account of the imagined perils which stalked the footsteps
of June, was a bit assured by their surroundings.

In front of them was a vacant plot, in which inoffensive horses took
their siesta in the sun, awaiting someone to come along and