This structure was of a size to accommodate two hundred men at once. Two tables ran the length of the unbroken interior--tables made roughly of the slabs or outside boards from a saw-mill. The benches were huge tree-trunks spiked fast upon stumps. There was a bench on either side of each table, and the places for the men were each set with a tin cup and a tin pie plate. The bread was heaped high on wooden platters, and all the condiments--catsup, vinegar, mustard, pepper, and salt--were in cans that had once held condensed milk. The cooks worked in an open-ended extension at the rear of the great room. The rule is to have one cook and two "cookees" to each sixty men. While I was a new arrival just undergoing introduction, the men, who had come in from work, and who had "washed up" in the little creeks and at the river bank, began to assemble in the "grub tent" for supper. They were especially interesting to me because there was every reason to believe that they formed an assembly as typical of the human flotsam of the border as ever was gathered on the continent. Very few were what might be called born laborers; on the contrary, they were mainly men of higher origin who had failed in older civilizations; outlaws from the States; men who had hoped for a gold-mine until hope was all but dead; men in the first flush of the gold fever; ne'er-do-wells; and here and there a working-man by training. They ate as a good many other sorts of men do, with great rapidity, little etiquette, and just enough unselfishness to pass each other the bread. It was noticeable that they seemed to have no time for talking. Certainly they had earned the right to be hungry, and the food was good and plentiful. [Illustration: A SKETCH ON THE WORK] Dan Dunn's tent was just in front of the mess tent, a few feet away on the edge of the river bluff. It was a little "A" tent, with a single cot on one side, a wooden chest on the other, and a small table between the two at the farther end, opposite the door. "Are ye looking at my wolverenes?" said he. "There's good men among them, and some that ain't so good, and many that's worse. But railroading is good enough for most of 'em. It ain't too rich for any man's blood, I assure ye."