inations of trade.
Some of them were hardly justifiable. The doctor of the place was also
a horse-dealer, with a side line in the veterinary business. Any tooth
extraction needed was forcibly performed by John Rust, the blacksmith.
The baker, Jake Wilkes, shod the human foot whenever he was tired of
punching his dough. The Methodist lay-preacher, Abe C. Horsley, sold
everything to cover up the body, whenever he wasn't concerned with the
soul. Then there was Angel Gay, an estimable butcher and a good enough
fellow; but it hardly seemed right that he should be in combination
with Zac Restless, the carpenter, for the disposal of Barnriff's
corpses. However, these things were, and had been accepted by the
village folk for so long that it seemed almost a pity to disturb
them.

Barnriff, viewed from a distance, was not without a certain
picturesqueness; but the distance had to be great enough to lose sight
of the uncouthness which a close inspection revealed. Besides, its
squalor did not much matter. It did not affect the temper of the folk
living within its boundaries. To them the place was a little temporary
"homelet," to coin a word. For frontier people are, for the most part,
transient. They only pause at such place on their fighting journey
through the wilder life. They pass on in time to other spheres, some
on an upward grade, others down the long decline, which is the road of
the ne'er-do-well. And with each inhabitant that comes and goes, some
detail of evolution is achieved by the little hamlet through which
they pass, until, in the course of long years, it, too, has fought its
way upward to the mathematical precision and bold glory of a modern
commercial city, or has joined in the downward march of the
ne'er-do-well.

The blazing summer sun burned down upon the unsheltered village. There
was no shade anywhere--that is, outside the houses. For the place had
grown up on the crests of the bald, green rollers of the Western
plains as though its original seedling had been tossed there by the
wanton summer breezes, and for no better reason.

Anthony Smallbones, familiarly known to his intimates as
"fussy-breeches," because he lived in a dream-fever of commercial
enterprise, and believed himself to be a Napoleon of finance--he ran a
store, at which he sold a collection of hardware, books, candy,
stationery, notions and "delicatessen"--was on his way to the
boarding-house for breakfast--there was only one boarding-house