of the short row of other buildings along the street.

"Civilisation's struck Coyote Centre good and proper, at last,
evidently," he commented. "They'll be having a bevel plate hearse with
carved wood tassels and a coon driver next!" He halted, indecisive, and
for the first time became conscious that not a human being was in sight.
In the street before him a pair of half-grown cockerels with ludicrously
long legs and abbreviated tails were scratching a precarious living from
amid the litter. On the sunny expanse of sidewalk before Buck Walker's
meat market a long-eared mongrel lay stretched out luxuriously in the
physical contentment of the subservient unmolested; but from one end of
the single street to the other not a human being was in sight; save the
present spectator, not a single disturber of the all-pervading quiet.
Landor had seen the spot where the town now stood when it was virgin
prairie, had watched every building it boasted rise from the earth, had
hitherto observed it through the gamut of its every mood from nocturnal
recklessness to profoundest daybreak remorse; but as it was now with the
sun nearing the meridian, deserted, dead--.

"Well, I'm beat!" he exploded as emphatically as though another were
listening. "There must have been a general cleanup this time. I fear
that the report of my respected nephew--" He checked himself suddenly, a
bit guiltily. Even though no one was listening, he was loath to voice an
inevitable conclusion. Decision, however, had triumphed over surprise at
last, and, leaving the main street, he headed toward what the proud
citizens denominated the residence quarter--a handful of unpainted
weather-stained one-story boxes, destitute of tree or of shrub
surrounding as factory tenements. The sun was positively hot now, and as
he went he unbuttoned his vest and sighed in unconscious satisfaction at
the relief. At the second domicile, a residence as nearly like the first