"Is this the best hotel?" I demanded. "It is so reckoned, suh. There are other hostelries, and I do not desire, suh, to draw invidious comparisons, their proprietors being friends of mine. But I will go so far as to say that the Queen caters only to the elite, suh, and its patronage is gilt edge." I stepped to the window, the lower sash of which was up, and gazed out--down into that dust-fogged, noisy, turbulent main street, of floury human beings and grime-smeared beasts almost within touch, boiling about through the narrow lane between the placarded makeshift structures. I lifted my smarting eyes, and across the hot sheet-iron roofs I saw the country south--a white-blotched reddish desert stretching on, desolate, lifeless under the sunset, to a range of stark hills black against the glow. "There are no private rooms, then?" I asked, choking with a gulp of despair. "You are perfectly private right here, suh," assured the Colonel. "You may strip to the hide or you may sleep with your boots on, and no questions asked. Gener'ly speaking, gentlemen prefer to retain a layer of artificial covering--but you ain't troubled much with the bugs, are you, Bill?" He leveled this query at the frowsy, whiskered man, who had awakened and was blinking contentedly. "I'm too alkalied, I reckon," Bill responded. "Varmints will leave me any time when there's fresh bait handy. That's why I likes to double up. That there Saint Louee drummer carried off most of 'em from this gent's bed, so he's safe." "You are again to be congratulated, suh," addressed the Colonel, to me. "Allow me to interdeuce you. Shake hands with my friend Mr. Bill Brady. Bill, I present to you a fellow-citizen of mine from grand old New York State." The frowsy man struggled up, shifted his revolver so as not to sit on it, and extended his hand. "Proud to make yore acquaintance, sir. Any friend of the Colonel's is a friend o' mine." "We will likker up directly," the Colonel informed. "But fust the gentleman desires to attend to his person. Mr. Brady, suh," he continued, for my benefit, "is one of our leading citizens, being proprietor of--what is it now, Bill?" "Wall," said Mr. Brady, "I've pulled out o' the Last Chance and I'm on spec'. The Last Chance got a leetle too much on the brace for healthy play; and when that son of a gun of a miner from South Pass City shot it up, I quit." "Naturally," conceded the Colonel. "Mr. Brady," he explained, "has been one of our most distinguished bankers, but he has retired from that industry and is considering other investments." "The bath-room? Where is it, gentlemen?" I ventured.