Track's End

End: with how I leave the one and ge

boy. I liked school well enough, but rather preferred horses; and a pen seems to me a small thing for a grown man, which I am now, to

liked by all and a square man, 2 everybody called him Old Bill Pitcher. I was named Judson, which had been my mother's name before she

great Sisseton prairie fire burned up the town of Lone Tree. I saw the smoke as our train lay at Siding No. 13 while the conductor and the other railroad men nailed down snake's-heads on the track. One had come up thr

railroad company set great store by Burrdock on account of his dealings with 3 some Sioux Indians. They had tried to ride on top of the

boy to grow up in. He had first wanted me to join him in braking on the railroad, but I judged the

s time I saw something of the world. Mother was sure I should be killed on the cars, but at last she gave her cons

Mondays and Thursdays, and went back Tuesdays and Fridays. It was a freight-train, with a 4 caboose on the end for passengers, "and the snake's-heads," as the fire

e people all went to Lac-qui-Parle, sixty miles farther back; so that at the time of which I write there was nothing between Track's End and Lac-qui-Parle except sidings and the ashes of Lone Tree; but these soon blew away. There were no people living in the country at this time, and the

pot. The town lay a little apart, and I could not make out its size. There were a hundred or more men waiting for the train, and one of them took the two mail-sacks in a wheelbarrow and went away toward the lights of the houses. There were a lot of mules and w

name was Sours. After I got a cold supper he showed me to my room. The second story was divided into about twenty rooms, the partitions being lathed but 6 not yet plastered. It made walls v

that season, and the train I came up on brought the paymaster with the money to pay the graders for their summer's work; so they all got drunk. There were some men from Billings in town, too. They were on their way east with a band of four hundred Montana ponies, which they

dy. They were going from room to room, and soon came into mine, tearing down the sheet which was hung up for a door. They crowded in and came straight to the bed

m," said o

older," sa

og, anyhow," said the man with th

y ear, "he ain't much more'n a boy–w

e as if it were made of rubber. But it never got quite back, and h

ir dog, though he said he didn't think they had ever had a dog. Pike, he said, h

red about beyond the street. Some of the buildings had canvas roofs, and there were a good many tents and covered wagons in which people lived. The whole town had been built since the railroad came through tw

ss was dried up and gray. I thought I could make out a low range of hills to the 9 west, where I supposed the Missouri River was. On my way back to town a man told me that a b

to the hotel S

don't you

ould be glad of

. "He got homesick for the States, and lit out and never said boo till half an hour before

d; "but I'll probably be goi

ck before winter. I guess there won't be nothing le

so near gone that I did not think it a good time to stand around and act partic

it might be broken into by some of the graders. They were acting worse than ever. There was no town government, but a man named Allenha

l and out of sight from the street. Some time after midnight I heard low voices outside and crept to a small open window. I could make out the forms of some men under a shed back of a store across a narrow alley.

use of you fellows trying to prot

nk. The man who had come from under the shed had fired point