ots, spread out like pews. There the charge was one dollar. That rate
chancing to be too steep for you, you might go into the open and rest in
one of the outdoor canvas pockets, which bellied down under your weight
like a hammock. There the schedule was fifty cents.

No matter what part of the house you might occupy on retiring, you were
warned by the wall-eyed young man who piloted you to the cot with your
number pinned on it that the hotel was not responsible for the personal
belongings of the guests. You were also cautioned to watch out for
thieves. The display of firearms while disrobing seemed to be encouraged
by the management for its moral effect, and to be a part of the ceremony
of retiring. It seemed to be the belief in the Hotel Metropole that when
a man stored a pistol beneath his pillow, or wedged it in between his
ribs and the side of the bunk, he had secured the safety of the night.

At the distant end of the main street, standing squarely across its
center, stood the little house which sheltered the branch of the United
States land-office, the headquarters being at Meander, a town a day's
journey beyond the railroad's end. A tight little board house it was,
like a toy, flying the emblem of the brave and the free as gallantly as
a schoolhouse or a forest-ranger station. Around it the crowd looked
black and dense from the railroad station. It gave an impression of
great activity and earnest business attention, while the flag was
reassuring to a man when he stepped off the train sort of dubiously and
saw it waving there at the end of the world.

Indeed, Comanche might be the end of the world--didn't the maps show
that it _was_ the end of the world, didn't the railroad stop there, and
doesn't the world always come to an abrupt end, all white and uncharted
beyond, at the last station on every railroad map you ever saw? It might
be the end of the world, indeed, but there was the flag! Commerce could
flourish there as well as in Washington, D. C., or New York, N. Y., or
Kansas City, U. S. A.; even trusts might swell and distend there under
its benign protectorate as in the centers of civilization and patriotism
pointed above.

So there was assurance and comfort to the timid in the flag at Comanche,
as there has been in the flag in other places at other times. For the
flag is a great institution when a man is far away from home and
expecting to bump into trouble at the next step.

Opposite the bank on the mai