appeared almost sober and New-Englandish. It had no
"steady" residents save a half-dozen railroad employees, the landlord
of the terrible hotel south of the tracks, where Roosevelt had had his
encounter with the drunken bully, and a certain Mrs. Nolan and her
daughters, who kept an eminently respectable boarding-house on the
opposite side of the railroad; but its "floating population" was
large. Every herd driven into the shipping-yards from one of the great
ranches in the upper Little Missouri country brought with it a dozen
or more parched cowboys hungering and thirsting for excitement as no
saint ever hungered and thirsted for righteousness; and celebrations
had a way of lasting for days. The men were Texans, most of them,
extraordinary riders, born to the saddle, but reckless, given to heavy
drinking, and utterly wild and irresponsible when drunk. It was their
particular delight to make life hideous for the station agent and the
telegraph operator. For some weeks Mingusville, it was said, had a new
telegraph operator every night. About ten o'clock the cowboys,
celebrating at the "hotel," would drift over to the board shack which
was the railroad station, and "shoot it full of holes." They had no
particular reason for doing this; they had no grudge against either
the railroad or the particular operator who happened to be in charge.
They were children, and it was fun to hear the bullets pop, and
excruciating fun to see the operator run out of the shack with a yell
and go scampering off into the darkness. One operator entered into
negotiations with the enemy. Recognizing their perfect right to shoot
up the station if they wanted to, he merely stipulated that they allow
him to send off the night's dispatches before they began. This request
seemed to the cowboys altogether reasonable. They waited until the
operator said that his work was done. Then, as he faded away in the
darkness, the night's bombardment began.

Into this tempestuous little "town," Roosevelt rode one day as night
was falling. No doubt because Mrs. Nolan's beds were filled, he was
forced to take a room at the nefarious hotel where he had chastised
the bully a year previous. Possibly to prevent the recurrence of that
experience, he retired early to the small room with one bed which had
been assigned him and sat until late reading the book he had brought
along in his saddle-pocket.

The house was quiet and every one was asleep, when a cowboy arrived
fr