"You'll not fail to see me. Everybody knows the Big Tent, everybody goes there. So au revoir." She was swallowed in the wake of the conductor, and I fain must gather my own belongings before following. The Big Tent, she said? I had not misunderstood; and I puzzled over the address, which impinged as rather bizarre, whether in West or East. We stopped with a jerk, amidst a babel of cries. "Benton! All out!" Out we stumbled. Here I was, at rainbow's end. CHAPTER IV I MEET FRIENDS What shall I say of a young man like myself, fresh from the green East of New York and the Hudson River, landed expectant as just aroused from a dream of rare beauty, at this Benton City, Wyoming Territory? The dust, as fine as powder and as white, but shot through with the crimson of sunset, hung like a fog, amidst which swelled a deafening clamor from figures rushing hither and thither about the platform like half-world shades. A score of voices dinned into my ears as two score hands grabbed at my valise and shoved me and dragged me. "The Desert Hotel. Best in the West. This way, sir." "Buffalo Hump Corral! The Buffalo Hump! Free drinks at the Buffalo Hump." "Vamos, all o' you. Leave the gent to me. I've had him before. Mike's Place for you, eh? Come along." "The Widow's Cafe! That's yore grub pile, gent. All you can eat for two bits." A deep voice boomed, stunning me. "The Queen, the Queen! Bath for every room. Individual towels. The Queen, the Queen, she's clean, she's clean." It was a magnificent bass, full toned as an organ, issuing, likewise as out of a reed, from a swart dwarf scarcely higher than my waist. The word "bath," with the promise of "individual towels," won me over. Something must be done, anyway, to get rid of these importunate runners. Thereupon I acquiesced, "All right, my man. The Queen," and surrendering my bag to his hairy paw I trudged by his guidance. The solicitations instantly ceased as if in agreement with some code. We left the station platform and went ploughing up a street over shoetops with the impalpable dust and denoted by tents and white-coated shacks sparsely bordering. The air was breezeless and suffocatingly loaded with that dust not yet deposited. The noises as from a great city swelled strident: shouts, hammerings, laughter, rumble of vehicles, cracking of lashes, barkings of dogs innumerable--betokening a thriving mart of industry. But although pedestrians streamed to and fro, the men in motley of complexions and costumes, the women, some of them fashionably dressed, with skirts eddying furiously; and wagons rolled, horses cantered, and from right and left merchants and hawksters seemed to be calling their wares, of city itself I could see only the veriest husk.