Misery, going west?"

"It stops for water at Glendora, about fifty or fifty-five miles west,
sometimes. I've heard 'em say if a feller buys a ticket for there in
Chicago, it'll let him off. But I don't guess it stops there regular.
Why, Duke? Was you aimin' to take the flier there?"

"No. We'll stop there tonight, then, if your horse can make it."

"Make it! If he can't I'll eat him raw. He's made seventy-five many a
time before today."

So they fared on that first day, in friendly converse. At sunset they
drew up on a mesa, high above the treeless, broken country through which
they had been riding all day, and saw Glendora in the valley below them.

"There she is," said Taterleg. "I wonder what we're goin' to run into
down, there?"

CHAPTER VI

ALLUREMENTS OF GLENDORA

In a bend of the Little Missouri, where it broadened out and took on the
appearance of a consequential stream, Glendora lay, a lonely little
village with a gray hill behind it.

There was but half a street in Glendora, like a setting for a stage, the
railroad in the foreground, the little sun-baked station crouching by
it, lonely as the winds which sung by night in the telegraph wires
crossing its roof. Here the trains went by with a roar, leaving behind
them a cloud of gray dust like a curtain to hide from the eyes of those
who strained from their windows to see the little that remained of
Glendora, once a place of more consequence than today.

Only enough remained of the town to live by its trade. There was enough
flour in the store, enough whisky in the saloon; enough stamps in the
post office, enough beds in the hotel, to satisfy with comfort the
demands of the far-stretching population of the country contiguous
thereto. But if there had risen an extraordinary occasion bringing a
demand without notice for a thousand pounds more of flour, a barrel more
of whisky, a hundred more stamps or five extra beds, Glendora would have
fallen under the burden and collapsed in disgrace.

Close by the station there were cattle pens for loading stock, with two
long tracks for holding the cars. In autumn fat cattle were driven down
out of the hidden valleys to entrain there for market. In those days
there was merriment after nightfall in Glendora. At other times it was
mainly a quiet place, the shooting that was done on its one-sided street
being of a peaceful nature in the way of expressing a feeling for which
some plain-witted, drunken cowherd