We're the children of the open and we hate the haunts o' men, But we had to come to town to get the mail. And we're ridin' home at daybreak--'cause the air is cooler then-- All 'cept one of us that stopped behind in jail. Shorty's nose won't bear paradin', Bill's off eye is darkly fadin', All our toilets show a touch of disarray; For we found that City life is a constant round of strife, And we ain't the breed for shyin' from a fray. Chant your war-whoops, pardners dear, while the east turns pale with fear, And the chaparral is tremblin' all aroun'; For we're wicked to the marrer; we're a midnight dream of terror, When we're ridin' up the rocky trail from town! Badger CLARK Meanwhile, as the months passed by, Medora was growing, and stretching itself. Even the Mandan _Pioneer_, a hundred and fifty miles to the east, thought it worth its while to brag about it. Medora is distinctively a cattle town [runs the comment], and is ambitious to be the cattle market of the Northwest. In two years it has grown from absolutely nothing to be a town which possesses a number of fine buildings, and represents a great many dollars of capital. The Black Hills freight depot is a well-built, substantial building. A number of brick houses have been built during the last year, including a very neat and attractive Catholic church, and a large hotel. The _Pioneer_ did not see fit to say that most of the "fine buildings" had been built by one man and that on the slender reed of that man's business acumen the prosperity of the whole community rested. To have done so would possibly have seemed like looking a gift-horse in the mouth. And Medora's prosperity appeared solid enough, in all conscience. Things were, in fact, humming. There was now a clothing store in town, a drug store, a hardware store, a barber shop. Backed by Roosevelt, Joe Ferris had erected a two-story structure on the eastern bank and moved his store from Little Missouri to be an active rival of the Marquis's company store. A school was built (by whom and with what funds remains mysterious) and Bill Dantz was made Superintendent of Education; and next to Joe's store, opposite the office of the _Bad Lands Cowboy_, Fisher laid the beginnings of Medora's Great White Way with a roller-skating pavilion, where the cowboys who drifted into town, drunk or sober, exhibited their skill to the hilarious delight of their friends. But the architectural monuments in which Medora's opulence most vigorously expressed itself were the saloons. The number of these varied, according to the season. Sometimes there were a dozen, sometimes there were more, for no one bothered about a license and any one with ten dollars and a jug of rum could start his own "liquor parlor."