By dawn the streets were filled by early skirmishers for breakfast, and sunrise met thousands more who, luggage in hand, talked and gesticulated and blocked the dusty passages between the unstable walls of that city of chance, which soon would come down and disappear like smoke from a wayside fire. The thousands with their bags in hand would not sleep another night beneath its wind-restless roofs. All those who expected to draw Claim Number One were ready to take the stage or hire a special conveyance to Meander, or, failing of their expectations in the lottery, to board the special trains which the railroad had made ready, and leave for home. By nine o'clock it seemed to the waiting throngs that several ordinary days had passed since they left their sagging canvas cots at daybreak to stand attendant upon the whim of chance. They gathered in the blazing sun in front of the office of the paper, looking in at Editor Mong, who seemed more like a quack doctor that morning than ever before, with his wrinkled coat-sleeves pushed above his elbows and his cuffs tucked back over them, his black-dyed whiskers gleaming in shades of green when the sun hit them, like the plumage of a crow. For all the news that came to Comanche over the telephone-wire that day must come through the office of _The Chieftain_. There was but one telephone in the town; that was in the office of the stage-line, and by arrangement with its owners, the editor had bottled up the slightest chance of a leak. There would be no bulletins, the editor announced. Anyone desiring news of the drawing must pay twenty-five cents for a copy of the paper containing it. It was the editor's one great chance for graft, and he meant to work it until it was winded. The lottery was to open in Meander at ten o'clock; but long before that hour the quivering excitement which shook the fabric of Comanche had reached the tent where Mrs. Reed mothered it over the company of adventurers. The lumberman and insurance agent were away early; Sergeant Schaefer and Milo Strong followed them to the newspaper office very shortly; and the others sat out in front, watching the long shadows contract toward the peg that June had driven in the ground the day before at the line of ten o'clock. "Well, this is the day," said William Bentley. "What will you take for your chance, Doctor?" "Well, it wouldn't take very much to get it this morning," Dr. Slavens replied, peering thoughtfully at the ground, "for it's one of those things that grow smaller and smaller the nearer you approach." "I'd say twenty-five hundred for mine," offered Horace. "Great lands!" exclaimed Mrs. Reed, blinking, as she looked out across the open toward the river. "If anybody will give me three dollars for my chance he can take it, and welcome." "Then you'd feel cheap if you won," June put in. "It's worth more than that even up in the thousands; isn't it, Mr. Walker?"