Western Dakota was sanctuary, and from every direction of the compass knaves of varying degrees of iniquity and misguided ability came to enjoy it. There was no law in the Bad Lands but "six-shooter law." The days were reasonably orderly, for there were "jobs" for every one; but the nights were wild. There was not much diversion of an uplifting sort in Medora that June of 1884. There was not even an "op'ry house." Butchers and cowboys, carpenters and laborers, adventurous young college graduates and younger sons of English noblemen, drank and gambled and shouted and "shot up the town together" with "horse-rustlers" and faro-dealers and "bad men" with notches on their guns. "Two-gun men" appeared from God-knows-whence, generally well supplied with money, and disappeared, the Lord knew whither, appearing elsewhere, possibly, with a band of horses whose brands had melted away under the application of a red-hot frying-pan, or suffered a sea-change at the touch of a "running iron." Again they came to Medora, and again they disappeared. The horse-market was brisk at Medora, though only the elect knew where it was or who bought and sold or from what frantic owner, two hundred miles to the north or south, the horses had been spirited away. It was a gay life, as Packard remarked. The "gayety" was obvious even to the most casual traveler whose train stopped for three noisy minutes at the Medora "depot." "Dutch Wannigan," when he remarked that "seeing the trains come in was all the scenery we had," plumbed the depths of Medora's hunger "for something to happen." A train (even a freight) came to stand for excitement, not because of any diversion it brought of itself out of a world of "dudes" and police-officers, but because of the deviltry it never failed to inspire in certain leading citizens of Medora. For Medora had a regular reception committee, whose membership varied, but included always the most intoxicated cowpunchers who happened to be in town. Its leading spirits were Bill Williams, the saloon-keeper, Van Zander, the wayward but attractive son of a Dutch patrician, and his bosom friend, Hell-Roaring Bill Jones; and if they were fertile in invention, they were no less energetic in carrying their inventions into execution. To shoot over the roofs of the cars was a regular pastime, to shoot through the windows was not unusual, but it was a genius who thought of the notion of crawling under the dining-car and shooting through the floor. He scattered the scrambled eggs which the negro waiter was carrying, but did no other damage. These general salvos of greeting, Bill Jones, Bill Williams, and the millionaire's son from Rotterdam were accustomed to vary by specific attention to passengers walking up and down the platform.