-breed camp was considerable bustle and excitement. The
activity of the Breed is not proverbial; they are at best a lazy lot,
but now men and women came and went bristling with energy to their
finger tips. Preparations were nearing completion. The chief item of
importance was the whisky supply, and this the treasurer, Baptiste, had
made his personal care. A barrel of the vilest "rot-gut" that was ever
smuggled into prohibition territory had been procured and carefully
secreted. This formed the chief refreshment, and, doubtless, the
"bluestone" with which its fiery contents were strengthened, would work
the passionate natures, on which it was to play, up to the proper
crime-committing pitch.

The orgie was to be held in a barn of considerable dimensions. It was a
ramshackle affair, reeking of old age and horses. The roof was decidedly
porous in places, being so lame and disjointed that the starry
resplendence of the summer sky was plainly visible from beneath it.

This, however, was a trifling matter, and of much less consequence than
the question of space. What few horse stalls had once occupied the
building had been removed, and the mangers alone remained, with the odor
of horse, to remind the guests of the original purpose of their
ballroom. A careful manipulation of dingy Turkey red, and material which
had once been white, struggled vainly to hide these mangers from view,
while coarse, rough boards which had at one time floored some of the
stalls, served to cover in the tops and convert them into seats. The
result was a triumph of characteristic ingenuity. The barn was converted
into a place of the necessary requirements, but rendered hideous in the
process.

Next came the disguising of the rafters and "collar-ties" of the
building. This was a process which lent itself to the curiously warped
artistic sense of the benighted people. Print--I mean cotton rags--was
the chief idea of decoration. They understood these stuffs. They were
cheap--or, at least, as cheap as anything sold at Lablache's store.
Besides, print decorated the persons of the buxom Breed women, therefore
what more appropriate than such stuff to cover the nakedness of the
building. Festoons of print, flags of print, rosettes of print: these
did duty for the occasion. The staring patterns gleamed on every beam,
or hung in bald draping almost down to the height of an ordinary man's
head. The effect was strangely reminiscent of a second-hand clothes
sho