t a
forlorn ranch-house and _corral_, and offered what is conventionally
called "entertainment for man and beast."

For years he lived there, dividing his time between fighting the Indians
and feeding the passing emigrants and their stock. Then the first
railroad to Denver was built, taking another route from the Missouri,
and Barker's occupation was gone. He retired with his gains to St. Louis
and lived in comfort.

Years passed on, and the "extension" over which our train is to pass was
planned. The old pioneers were excellent natural engineers, and their
successors could find no better route than they had chosen. Thus it was
that "Barker's" became, during the construction period, an important
point, and the frontiersman's name came to figure on time-tables.
Meanwhile the place passed through a process of evolution which would
have delighted Darwin. In the party of engineers which first camped
there was Sinclair, and it was by his advice that the contractors
selected it for division headquarters. Then came drinking "saloons," and
gambling-houses--alike the inevitable concomitant and the bane of
Western settlements; then scattered houses and shops, and a shabby
so-called hotel, in which the letting of miserable rooms (divided from
each other by canvas partitions) was wholly subordinated to the business
of the bar. Before long, Barker's had acquired a worse reputation than
even other towns of its type, the abnormal and uncanny aggregations of
squalor and vice which dotted the plains in those days; and it was at
its worst when Sinclair returned thither and took up his quarters in the
engineers' building. The passion for gambling was raging, and to pander
thereto were collected as choice a lot of desperadoes as ever "stocked"
cards or loaded dice. It came to be noticed that they were on excellent
terms with a man called "Jeff" Johnson, who was lessee of the hotel; and
to be suspected that said Johnson, in local parlance, "stood in with"
them. With this man had come to Barker's his daughter Sarah, commonly
known as "Sally," a handsome girl with a straight, lithe figure, fine
features, reddish auburn hair, and dark blue eyes. It is but fair to say
that even the "toughs" of a place like Barker's show some respect for
the other sex, and Miss Sally's case was no exception to the rule. The
male population admired her; they said she "put on heaps of style"; but
none of them had seemed to make any progress in her good graces.