rolled the wheels of destiny. He had set the first fence across the
Trail!

The stranger who asked for the old, wild days of Ellisville the Red was
told that no such days had ever been. Yet stay: perhaps there were
half a dozen men who had lived at Ellisville from the first who could,
perhaps, take one to the boarding-house of Mrs. Daly; who could,
perhaps, tell something of the forgotten days of the past, the days of
two years ago, before the present population of Ellisville came West.
There was, perhaps, a graveyard, but the headstones had been so few
that one could tell but little of it now. Much of this, no doubt, was
exaggeration, this talk of a graveyard, of a doubled street, of
murders, of the legal killings which served as arrests, of the
lynchings which once passed as justice. There was a crude story of the
first court ever held in Ellisville, but of course it was mere libel to
say that it was held in the livery barn. Rumour said that the trial
was over the case of a negro, or Mexican, or Indian, who had been
charged with murder, and who was himself killed in an attempt at
lynching, by whose hand it was never known. These things were
remembered or talked about by but very few, these the old-timers, the
settlers of two years ago. Somewhere to the north of the town, and in
the centre of what was declared by some persons to be the old cattle
trail, there was reputed to be visible a granite boulder, or perhaps it
was a granite shaft, supposed to have been erected with money
contributed by cattlemen at the request of Mrs. Daly, who kept the
boarding-house on a back street. Some one had seen this monument, and
brought back word that it had cut upon its face a singular inscription,
namely:

JUAN THE LOCO,

THE END OF THE TRAIL.

CHAPTER XXXI

THE SUCCESS OF BATTERSLEIGH

One morning when Franklin entered his office he found his friend
Battersleigh there before him, in full possession, and apparently at
peace with all the world. His tall figure was reclining in an office
chair, and his feet were supported by the corner of the table, in an
attitude which is called American, but which is really only masculine,
and quite rational though unbeautiful. Battersleigh's cloak had a
swagger in its very back, and his hat sat at a cocky angle not to be
denied. He did not hear Franklin as he approached the door, and the
latter stood looking in for a moment, amused at Battersleigh and his
attitude