After a good dinner in one of those admirable dining cars one always finds on western roads, and a good smoke, my companion and I were ready for bed. But as we were about to retire, a fellow-passenger with whom we had been talking, asked, "Aren't you going to sit up for Elko?" "What is there at Elko?" inquired my companion, with a yawn. "Oh," said the other, "there's a little of the local color of Nevada there. You had better wait." "I don't believe we'll be able to see anything," I put in, glancing out at the black night. "It is something you couldn't see by daylight," said the stranger. That made us curious, so we sat up. As the train slowed for Elko, and we went to get our overcoats, we observed that one passenger, a woman, was making ready to get off. We had noticed her during the day--a stalwart woman of thirty-three or four, perhaps, who, we judged, had once been very handsome, though she now looked faded. Her hair was a dull red, and her complexion was of that milky whiteness which so often accompanies red hair. Her eyes were green, cold and expressionless, and her mouth, though well formed, sagged at the corners, giving her a discontented and rather hard look. I remember that we wondered what manner of woman she was, and that we could not decide. The train stopped, and with our acquaintance of the car, my companion and I alighted. It was a long train, and our sleeper, which was near the rear, came to a standstill some distance short of the station building, so that the part of the platform to which we stepped was without light. Beyond the station we saw several buildings looming like black shadows, but that was all; we could make out nothing of the town. "I don't see much here," I remarked to the man who had suggested sitting up. "Come on," he said, moving back through the blackness, towards the end of the train. As I turned to follow him I saw the red-haired woman step down from the car and hand her suitcase to a man who had been awaiting her; they stood for a moment in conversation; as I moved away I heard their low voices. Reaching the last car our guide descended to the track and crossed to the other side. We followed. My first glimpse of what lay beyond gave me the impression that a large railroad yard was spread out before me, its myriad switch-lights glowing red through the black night. But as my eyes became accustomed to the darkness, I saw that here was not a maze of tracks, but a maze of houses, and that the lights were not those of switches, but of windows and front doors: night signs of the traffic to which the houses were dedicated. [Illustration: The Cliff House has a Sorrento setting and hectic turkey-trotting nights] "There," said our acquaintance. "A few years back you'd have seen this in almost any town out here, but things are changing; I don't know another place on this whole line that shows off its red light district the way Elko does."