enough in daytime, but at night, drunk or sober, it's a tough place."

Before I had finished eating a shrill whistle from the sawmill called the
hands to work; soon it was followed by the rumble of machinery and the
sharp singing of a saw.

I set out to see the lumber-camp, and although I stepped forth boldly, the
truth was that with all my love for the Wild West I would have liked to be
at home. But here I was, and I determined not to show the white feather.

I passed a row of cook-shacks like the one I had been in, and several
stores and saloons. The lumber-camp was a little town. A rambling log cabin
attracted me by reason of the shaggy mustangs standing before it and the
sounds of mirth within. A peep showed me a room with a long bar, where men
and boys were drinking. I heard the rattle of dice and the clink of silver.
Seeing the place was crowded, I thought I might find Dick there, so I
stepped inside. My entrance was unnoticed, so far as I could tell; in fact,
there seemed no reason why it should be otherwise, for, being roughly
dressed, I did not look very different from the many young fellows there. I
scanned all the faces, but did not see Dick's, nor, for that matter, the
Mexican's. Both disappointed and relieved, I turned away, for the picture
of low dissipation was not attractive.

The hum of the great sawmill drew me like a magnet. I went out to the
lumber-yard at the back of the mill, where a trestle slanted down to a pond
full of logs. A train loaded with pines had just pulled in, and dozens of
men were rolling logs off the flat-cars into a canal. At stations along the
canal stood others pike-poling the logs toward the trestle, where an
endless chain caught them with sharp claws and hauled them up. Half-way
from, the ground they were washed clean by a circle of water-spouts.