"At the election, who would take interest to elect a decent man, even if you could get hold of one? Not the other decent men. They're too busy, and too little interested. But the desperadoes and hard characters would be very much interested in getting some of their own stripe in office. The chances are they would be coming back to Italian Bar next season, especially if they had the legal machinery for keeping themselves out of trouble. You'd simply put yourself in their power." Dr. Rankin shook his head. "Just the same, you'll see that I am right," he prophesied. "This illusion of freedom to the social obligation is only an illusion. It will have to be paid for with added violence and turmoil." "Why, I believe you're right as to that, Doctor," agreed Danny, "but I've discovered that often in this world a man has to pay a high price for what he gets. In fact, sometimes it's very expedient to pay a high price." "I can foresee a lot of violence before the thing is worked out." At this point the doctor, to his manifest disgust, was summoned to attend to some patient. "That all sounds interesting," said I to Danny Randall once we were alone, "but I don't exactly fit it in." "It means," said Danny, "that some day Morton's gang will go a little too far, and we'll have to get together and string some of them up." CHAPTER XXXIII THE OVERLAND IMMIGRANTS The overland immigrants never ceased to interest us. The illness, destitution, and suffering that obtained among these people has never been adequately depicted. For one outfit with healthy looking members and adequate cattle there were dozens conducted by hollow-eyed, gaunt men, drawn by few weak animals. Women trudged wearily, carrying children. And the tales they brought were terrible. They told us of thousands they had left behind in the great desert of the Humboldt Sink, fighting starvation, disease, and the loss of cattle. Women who had lost their husbands from the deadly cholera were staggering on without food or water, leading their children. The trail was lined with dead mules and cattle. Some said that five thousand had perished on the plains from cholera alone. In the middle of the desert, miles from anywhere, were the death camps, the wagons drawn in the usual circle, the dead animals tainting the air, every living human being crippled from scurvy and other diseases. There was no fodder for the cattle, and one man told us that he estimated, soberly, that three fourths of the draught animals on the plains must die. "And then where will their owners be?"