In the face of such argument, it seemed a pity to waste the water. So none was wasted. Pearl Brown went back to the Alamo, which she owned and ran, climbed up to the top of a sort of lookout chair behind the bar, glared at a beer slinger, and said: “Casey, you’re not tending to business. There’s a gent over there at No. 5 table that has slipped off his chair and thinks the floor is his boarding house. Chuck him out!” The town marshal, arriving breathless and solicitous, approached her and began to condole her on her loss. “Is there anything I can do, Misses Brown?” he asked, with due official courtesy. “Not unless you wish to clear the ashes away to-morrow morning,” replied Pearl Brown, unsmiling and unmoved. “I may want to build something else there. Maybe it’ll be a nonsectarian church, or a Y. M. C. A. Perhaps the latter would be best. This camp needs one.” Murdock had not tired of discussing the idiosyncrasies of Pearl Brown before she started another reformation. She had all the curtains and red-plush sofas removed from the boxes in the Alamo and a new sign put over the bar: THIS IS A TEMPERANCE HOUSE. TEMPERANCE CONSISTS IN KNOWING WHEN YOU’VE HAD ENOUGH AND THE WISE MAN MIXES NO DRINKS! Having succeeded in clearing out her only rivals in business worth consideration, by organizing a tar-feather-and-rail party for their benefit which she led in person, the financial losses of her reform movement didn’t exactly hit her bank account, as John Fosdike remarked when he heard of the changes. “Now with young Horace Ring and his _Weekly Star_,” remarked his long-time friend “Circumlocutory” Smith, “it’s different. Most every reform he undertakes costs him something. Sometimes most of his subscribers, and many times a beating; but does he count the cost? Not he. Just rolls up his sleeves and horns in with hoofs, tail, and mane all flying in different directions. The more I see of that boy, since he got grace and took to carrying a gun that he doesn’t know how to use, the better I like him. By the way, what’s he got to say about Pearl Brown’s latest moves?” Fosdike laughed through his red beard and his eyes twinkled humorously. “Haven’t you seen it in his paper? Oh, I forgot that you’d been away for a couple of weeks. Well, he came out with an editorial in which he praised her but wound up with the statement that while this was a step in the right direction, she could earn the higher approval of the better class of citizens by closing the Alamo entirely and taking up some more feminine occupation, like millinery. Pearl got riled when she read it and went to see him. Nobody knows whether she had her brass knuckles in her bag or not, but she met young Ring on the street and told him that when she wanted advice, she’d call on him personally.