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