mpus or the biggest butte in the Bad
Lands to become my right hand. Blessed be the name of O'Hara, be it
Kim or Johnny."

They worked together, with Joe Ferris and Sylvane and Merrifield and
Gregor Lang and Howard Eaton, the solid citizens, and Roosevelt, the
aggressive champion of order, to establish America in a patch of
sagebrush wilderness.

XX

Bill's head was full o' fire
An' his gizzard full o' rum,
An' the things he said wuz rich an' red
An' rattled as they come.

Dave wuz on his stummick,
Readin' the news at his ease-like,
When Bill comes, brave, sayin' what he'll do to Dave
In words what could walk away, cheese-like.

Ol' Bill's fist wuz man-size
Sure as any alive--
But Dave, never squintin', turns over the printin'
An' there wuz his Forty-five.

Bill he chokes an' swallers,
But Dave he's gentle an' mild,
An' they talks together o' cows an' the weather,
An' allows they is re-con-ciled.

From _Medora Nights_

Where, meanwhile, was the Marquis de Mores?

A casual observer, during the spring of 1885, might have remarked that
physically he was never long at any one place; but that metaphorically
he was on the crest of the wave. The erection of the great abattoir,
which had replaced the more primitive structure built in 1883, gave an
impression of great prosperity. Actually, however, it was a symptom of
failure. It had, in fact, been erected only because of the
irremediable inefficiency of the original smaller structure. By the
end of 1884 the Marquis had discovered that the slaughtering of
twenty-five head of cattle a day could not, by the most painstaking
application of "business methods," be made profitable. It took more
than butchers, the Marquis found, to operate a slaughter-house. An
engine was needed and an engineer, a foreman, a bookkeeper, a
hide-man, a tallow-man, a blood-man, a cooper, and a night-watchman.
These men could easily take care of three or four hundred head a day,
and they were required to take care only of twenty-five.

The Marquis was not without executive ability. He had, since the
preceding autumn, sought competent advisers, moreover, and followed
their suggestions. Among other things, these advisers had told him
that, owing to the unusual quality of the stem-cured grass in the Bad
Lands, beef fit for market could be slaughtered as early as the first
of June when beef command