said. "Good-bye!" The horses
sprang sharply forward. He was gone.

The roll of the wheels and the rhythmic hoof-beats rapidly lessened to
the ear as Franklin drove on into the blackening night. In her own
little room Mary Ellen sat, her face where it might have been seen in
profile had there been a light or had the distant driver looked round
to see. Mary Ellen listened--listened until she could hear hoof and
wheel no more. Then she cast herself upon the bed, face downward, and
lay motionless and silent. Upon the little dresser lay a faded
photograph, fallen forward also upon its face, lying unnoticed and
apparently forgot.

CHAPTER XXV

BILL WATSON

The sheriff of Ellisville sat in his office oiling the machinery of the
law; which is to say, cleaning his revolver. There was not yet any
courthouse. The sheriff was the law. Twelve new mounds on the
hillside back of the Cottage Hotel showed how faithfully he had
executed his duties as judge and jury since he had taken up his office
at the beginning of the "cow boom" of Ellisville. His right hand had
found somewhat to do, and he had done it with his might.

Ellisville was near the zenith of its bad eminence. The entire country
had gone broad-horn. Money being free, whisky was not less so. The
bar of the Cottage was lined perpetually. Wild men from the range rode
their horses up the steps and into the bar-room, demanding to be served
as they sat in the saddle, as gentlemen should. Glass was too tempting
to the six-shooters of these enthusiasts, and the barkeeper begged the
question by stowing away the fragments of his mirror and keeping most
of his bottles out of sight. More than once he was asked to hold up a
bottle of whisky so that some cow-puncher might prove his skill by
shooting the neck off from the flask. The bartender was taciturn and
at times glum, but his face was the only one at the bar that showed any
irritation or sadness. This railroad town was a bright, new thing for
the horsemen of the trail--a very joyous thing. No funeral could check
their hilarity; no whisky could daunt their throats, long seared with
alkali.

It was notorious that after the civil war human life was held very
cheap all over America, it having been seen how small a thing is a man,
how little missed may be a million men taken bodily from the
population. Nowhere was life cheaper than on the frontier, and at no
place on that frontier of less value than at