lings. The characteristic red
and green light-fire had swept the country near by--a horizontal beam this
time--and the town of Byron was reported destroyed, and in all likelihood
with the loss of its entire population.

The Boston _Observer_ sent me to Billings almost immediately by
quadruplane. I arrived there about eight o'clock on the evening of the
10th. The city was in a turmoil. Ranchers from the neighboring cattle
country thronged its streets. A perfect exodus of people--Mormons and oil
men from Shoshone country, almost the entire populations of Cody, Powell,
Garland, and other towns near the threatened section, the Indians from the
Crow Reservation at Frannie--all were streaming through Billings.

The Wyoming State Airplane Patrol, gathered in a squadron by orders from
Cheyenne, occasionally passed overhead, flashing huge white searchlights.
I went immediately to the office of the Billings _Dispatch_. It was so
crowded I could not get in. From what I could pick up among the excited,
frightened people of Billings, and the various bulletins that the
_Dispatch_ had sent out during the day, the developments of the first
twenty-four hours of Mercutian invasion were these:

Only a single "vehicle"--we called it that for want of a better name--had
landed. Airplane observation placed its exact position on the west bank of
the Shoshone River, about four miles southwest of Byron and the same
distance southeast of Garland. The country here is typically that of the
Wyoming desert--sand and sagebrush--slightly rolling in some places, with
occasional hills and buttes.

The Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad runs down its spur from the
Northern Pacific near Billings, passes through the towns of Frannie--near
the border of Montana and Wyoming--and Garland, and terminates at Cody.
This line, running special trains throughout the day, had brought up a
large number of people. During the afternoon a bomb of some kind--it was
vaguely described as a variation of the red and green light-rays--had
destroyed one of the trains near Garland. The road was now open only down
to Frannie.

The town of Byron, I learned, was completely annihilated. It had been
swept by the Mercutian Light and destroyed by fire. Garland was as yet
unharmed. There was broken country between it and the Mercutian invaders,
and the rays of the single light which they were using could not reach it
directly.

Such, briefly, was the situation as I found it t