“Hello, what’s that?” he added. A group of men was coming up at a fast gait from the southern edge of the town. Among them was one, apparently a leader, whose rapid discourse occasionally was broken by wild whoops. “Who’s that?” laughed Hickok. “Some more wild men from down the trail?” In effect, it was Mr. McCoyne, explaining to the citizens of Abilene that beyond a peradventure he had met and traveled with an actual herd of cattle, actually bound for Abilene. Moreover, the said herd was then and there camped just below the Solomon, within easy reach of town. This certainly was news of interest to McMasters as well as to Wild Bill Hickok. McCoyne was too much excited to identify any one, did not remember McMasters, whom he had not recently seen and never had known well. “Listen, men!” he shouted. “We’ve got to have a celebration. Get all the Eastern men together. Go see if our new band is sober enough to play any sort of tune. Get ’em down on the portico at the Drovers’ Cottage in an hour or so. When I bring the herd into town, and we get right opposite the Cottage, tell ’em to strike up. We’ve got to show these people what a real live town is. “Now, come on,” he resumed. “I own a interest in the Spread Eagle Saloon”—it chanced to be the one whose sign had served for a target just now, later a matter of much pride to the owner—“but I’m going to change the name to Lone Star. Come on and have a drink with McCoyne, president of the Abilene Stockyards!” By magic, from their tents and dugouts, their sod huts and log hovels and their residences of raw pine board, the men of Abilene assembled—border men, skin hunters, loafers, gamblers, thieves, citizens and aliens, merchants and cattle buyers; a throng sufficiently motley for a total population of a very hundred. They crowded into the saloon, formed an overflow meeting upon the outside; primitive men in a primitive day. Around this primitive scene stretched a wide and primitive world. The blue sky, flecked with fleecy clouds, bent over an endless sea of grasses growing to the very edge of Abilene. The flowers nodded and beckoned in the gentle wind. Not a furrow of plow was there. These rude men of Abilene were forerunners of an inland empire soon to come but not yet over the horizon. Hickok and McMasters did not go beyond the edge of the crowd. The former seemed now, as so often he was, absorbed in the sheer beauty of the prairies. “It’s pretty,” said he, waving his hand. “I hate to think of its changing.” A tinge of his occasional melancholy fell upon him. “Of course, it will change and change fast,” said he. “Well, I was a part of this.” Without affectation, he spoke in the past tense. There never was a killer who gave himself a long life. Inside the saloon, mounted on a chair, McCoyne, president of the Abilene Stockyards, was addressing the multitude.