Two days later, early in the morning, the west bound express dropped Ross Grant and half a dozen other passengers at Toluca, in southern Montana, a station with a water-tank and some cattle corrals attached. Here stood the train which by day plied over the branch road to Cody, and by night returned to Toluca. It was a mixed train consisting of freight and express cars with a sleeper at the end. The half dozen passengers, reenforced by others left by the east bound express, all men, transferred themselves to this coach. Every one except Ross seemed to be more or less acquainted with every one else. Ross sat silent, listening and looking out on as much of the great West as was visible from the slowly moving car. Across the windswept, sun-cracked plain grumbled the old engine. On either side were herds of cattle fattening on the dusty dried grass, which looked to Ross dead and worthless. Not a tree met his eyes, and not a house. "Got the Western fever yet?" drawled a voice behind him finally, and Ross looked around into the good-natured face of a man who had boarded the north bound express at Omaha. Ross shook his head decidedly. "There's nothing here to give a fellow the Western fever," he returned, pointing to the flat yellow plain overlaid by the dull yellow sunshine. The man lounged forward, his elbows on the back of Ross's seat, and grinned. He was apparently about thirty, short and fair, with sandy hair and mustache. He wore corduroy trousers and coat, with a dark flannel shirt and turn-over collar under which was knotted carelessly a broad green silk tie. Hanging to the back of his head was a brown, broad-brimmed hat, the crown encircled with a narrow band of intricately woven hair dyed in all the colors of the rainbow. "I'll tell ye what's out there that gives most of us the Western fever," he declared; "and that's money prospects. Sort of a yellow fever, ye know, it is, except that no one wants to be cured." "Then I don't want to catch it in the first place," declared Ross, looking out of the window again. Presently some one in the rear of the car lowered a newspaper, and rumbled over the top of it: "You fellers rec'lect old man Quinn?" Some did; some did not. To the latter, the speaker explained. "Used to live in Cody. Friend of Buffalo Bill, old man Quinn was. Went down to Oklahomy five years ago, and bought a sheep ranch. He and some of the cattlemen around him got by the ears over how much of the range belonged to the sheep----" Here an inarticulate murmur sounded through the car. There was a "cattle war" on in Wyoming at that time.