s softened to rose and
then to lavender, and lavender gave place to shadowy gray, and gray
gave place to the luminous purple of night. The leaves of the
cottonwood trees before the house were never still, and often the
cooing of mourning doves would come down to him from some high bough.
He heard the thrush in the thicket near by, and in the distance the
clanging cries of the water-fowl. He knew the note of every bird, and
they were like friends calling to him.

XIX

We're the children of the open and we hate the haunts o' men,
But we had to come to town to get the mail.
And we're ridin' home at daybreak--'cause the air is cooler then--
All 'cept one of us that stopped behind in jail.
Shorty's nose won't bear paradin', Bill's off eye is darkly fadin',
All our toilets show a touch of disarray;
For we found that City life is a constant round of strife,
And we ain't the breed for shyin' from a fray.

Chant your war-whoops, pardners dear, while the east turns pale with fear,
And the chaparral is tremblin' all aroun';
For we're wicked to the marrer; we're a midnight dream of terror,
When we're ridin' up the rocky trail from town!

Badger CLARK

Meanwhile, as the months passed by, Medora was growing, and stretching
itself. Even the Mandan _Pioneer_, a hundred and fifty miles to the
east, thought it worth its while to brag about it.

Medora is distinctively a cattle town [runs the comment],
and is ambitious to be the cattle market of the Northwest.
In two years it has grown from absolutely nothing to be a
town which possesses a number of fine buildings, and
represents a great many dollars of capital. The Black Hills
freight depot is a well-built, substantial building. A
number of brick houses have been built during the last year,
including a very neat and attractive Catholic church, and a
large hotel.

The _Pioneer_ did not see fit to say that most of the "fine buildings"
had been built by one man and that on the slender reed of that man's
business acumen the prosperity of the whole community rested. To
have done so would possibly have seemed like looking a gift-horse in
the mouth. And Medora's prosperity appeared solid enough, in all
conscience. Things were, in fact, humming. There was now a clothing
store in town, a drug store, a hardware store, a barber shop. Backed
by Roosevelt, Joe Fe