etition reached his excellency when he was amiably
disposed, you might, in the course of a few weeks, get the desired
permission--but, any way you figured it, whisky was hard to get, and
when you got it it came mighty high.

Naturally, that sort of thing didn't appeal to many of the
high-stomached children of fortune who ranged up and down the
Territory--being nearly all Americans, born with the notion that it is a
white man's incontestable right to drink whatever he pleases whenever it
pleases him. Consequently, every mother's son of them who knew how
rustled a "worm," took up his post in some well-hidden coulee close to
the line, and inaugurated a small-sized distillery. Others, with less
skill but just as much ambition, delivered it in four-horse loads to
the traders, who in turn "boot-legged" it to whosoever would buy. Some
of them got rich at it, too; which wasn't strange, when you consider
that everybody had a big thirst and plenty of money to gratify it. I've
seen barrels of moonshine whisky, so new and rank that two drinks of it
would make a jack-rabbit spit in a bull-dog's face, sold on the quiet
for six and seven dollars a quart--and a twenty-dollar gold piece was
small money for a gallon.

All this, of course, was strictly against the peace and dignity of the
powers that were, and so the red-coated men rode the high divides with
their eagle eye peeled for any one who looked like a whisky-runner. And
whenever they did locate a man with the contraband in his possession,
that gentleman was due to have his outfit confiscated and get a chance
to ponder the error of his ways in the seclusion of a Mounted Police
guardhouse if he didn't make an exceedingly fast getaway.

We all took a drink when these buffalo-hunters produced the "red-eye."
So far as the right or wrong of having contraband whisky was concerned,
I don't think any one gave it a second thought. The patriarchal decree
of the government was a good deal of a joke on the plains,
anyway--except when you were caught defying it! Then Piegan Smith set
the keg on the ground by the fire where everybody could help himself as
he took the notion, and I laid down by a wagon while dinner was being
cooked.

After six weeks of hard saddle-work, it struck me just right to lie
there in the shade with a cool breeze fanning my face, and before long I
was headed smoothly for the Dreamland pastures. I hadn't dozed very long
when somebody scattered my drowsiness with an an