o the main street, and here
there was a different atmosphere. The first thing he saw was a man
dressed as a cowpuncher from belt to spurs--spurs on a miner--but above
the waist he blossomed in a frock coat and a silk hat. Around the coat
he had fastened his belt, and the shirt beneath the coat was common
flannel, open at the throat. He walked, or rather staggered, on the arm
of an equally strange companion who was arrayed in a white silk shirt,
white flannel trousers, white dancing pumps, and a vast sombrero! But as
if this was not sufficient protection for his head, he carried a parasol
of the most brilliant green silk and twirled it above his head. The two
held a wavering course and went blindly past Donnegan.

It was sufficiently clear that the storekeeper had followed the gold.

He noted a cowboy sitting in his saddle while he rolled a cigarette.
Obviously he had come in to look things over rather than to share in the
mining, and he made the one sane, critical note in the carnival of noise
and color. Donnegan began to pass stores. There was the jeweler's; the
gent's furnishing; a real estate office--what could real estate be doing
on the Young Muddy's desert? Here was the pawnshop, the windows of which
were already packed. The blacksmith had a great establishment, and the
roar of the anvils never died away; feed and grain and a dozen
lunch-counter restaurants. All this had come to The Corner within six
weeks.

Liquor seemed to be plentiful, too. In the entire length of the street
he hardly saw a sober man, except the cowboy. Half a dozen in one group
pitched silver dollars at a mark. But he was in the saloon district now,
and dominant among the rest was the big, unpainted front of a building
before which hung an enormous sign:

LEBRUN'S JOY EMPORIUM

Donnegan turned in under the sign.

It was one big room. The bar stretched completely around two sides of
it. The floor was dirt, but packed to the hardness of wood. The low roof
was supported by a scattering of wooden pillars, and across the floor
the gaming tables were spread. At that vast bar not ten men were
drinking now; at the crowding tables there were not half a dozen
players; yet behind the bar stood a dozen tenders ready to meet the
evening rush from the mines. And at the tables waited an equal number of
the professional gamblers of the house.

From the door Donnegan observed these things with one sweeping glance,
and then proceeded to transform himsel