Imagine a town eight thousand feet above the sea, freezing cold, again the middle of the night. How I got off the train and over to the hotel, where shown the only light, I do not know. I do know, however, that I put a chair under the handle of the door, candle and matches and my pistol beside the bed, before I went to sleep. Daylight showed no improvement, but only took away the air of dark mystery and bared to the eye a bleakness indescribable. To have been told that there was no telegraph office would not have surprised me a bit, but to learn that it was “not a money order station” was almost worse. Sitting on a stone in front of the hotel, I tried to think out my problem. The temperature was twenty or thirty below zero, nothing grew in the ground, and all the ice and snow was blown away by the terrible winds as soon as it fell. That morning two men had been found frozen stiff within a hundred yards of the hotel. They had not seen the light, which was on the other side of the house, and had simply lain down and decided to stop. To see the dead bodies of these men who had given in a hundred yards from safety was one of the greatest lessons I ever learned—NEVER STOP! I soon became acquainted with the population, which consisted of mine host and his Chinese cook, the storekeeper and sheriff, two hundred men in the roundhouse, and two women who earned their living in a questionable manner at night and spent the daylight hours sewing and mending for the workmen. Although these women were undoubtedly under thirty, they looked aged and worn, and their hands were calloused from the needle. Every vestige of attraction had departed long ago, and I wondered how they could be so kindly and cheerful amid such surroundings of hopelessness. At last I formulated a plan and, going to the storekeeper, who was sure to have cash on hand, I asked him if he ever lent money and at what per cent? He said, “yes,” but what security could I give? Two or three hundred tramps passed through the town every day, and my word that it would be sent to him was no good whatever. Again I went out to my stone. A Yankee is seldom in so tight a place that he can’t wiggle out, and I knew if I could only think hard enough I could solve the problem. Going back, I said to my friend, the storekeeper: “If you knew that there was a sum of money deposited in your name in a certain bank in Cincinnati, would you give it to me?” He answered, “Yes.” I telegraphed to my friend Harrison, who must have sensed that I would have trouble on the way and had told me to be sure to call on him for anything whatever. “Place one hundred dollars to the credit of Sam Atkins in the First National Bank of Cincinnati.” He understood, for after a cashier’s confirmation for the careful Mr. Atkins, I received my hundred, less five per cent, and was on my way again.