stumbled toward the exit. Mick busied himself wiping the soiled bar with
a towel, if possible, even more filthy. At the threshold, his hand upon
the knob, Blair paused, stiffened, grew livid in the face.

"May Satan blister your scoundrel souls, all of you!" he cursed.

Not a man within sound of his voice gave sign that he had heard, as the
opened door returned to its casing with a crash.




CHAPTER II

DESOLATION


Ten miles out on the prairies,--not lands plane as a table, as they are
usually pictured, but rolling like the sea with waves of tremendous
amplitude--stood a rough shack, called by courtesy a house. Like many a
more pretentious domicile, it was of composite construction, although
consisting of but one room. At the base was the native prairie sod,
piled tier upon tier. Above this the superstructure, like the bar of
Mick Kennedy's resort, was of warping cottonwood. Built out from this
single room and forming a part of it was what the designer had called a
woodshed; but as no tree the size of a man's wrist was within ten miles,
or a railroad within fifty, the term was manifestly a misnomer. Wood in
any form it had never contained; instead, it was filled with that
providential fuel of the frontiersman, found superabundantly upon the
ranges,--buffalo chips.