What happened--shootings, and doings of all sorts--mostly centred on the Forest Queen. That was the only place that called itself a hotel in Palomitas--folks being able to get some sort of victuals there, and it having bunks in a room off the bar-room where passers-through was give a chance to think (by morning they was apt to think different) they was going to have a night's sleep. Kicking against what you got--and against the throwed-in extras you'd a-been better without--didn't do no good. Old Tenderfoot Sal, who kept the place, only stuck her fat elbows out and told the kickers she done the best she knowed how to, and she reckoned it was as good as you could expect in them parts, and most was suited. If they didn't like the Forest Queen Hotel, she said, they was free to get out of it and go to one that suited 'em better--and as there wasn't none to go to, Sal held the cards. She was a corker, Sal was! By her own account of herself, she'd learned hotel-keeping through being a sutler's wife in the war. What sutling had had to do with it was left to guess at, and there was opinions as to how much her training in hoteling had done for her; but it was allowed she'd learned a heap of other things--of one sort and another--and her name of Tenderfoot was give her because them fat feet of hers, in the course of her travels, had got that hard I reckon she wouldn't a-noticed it walking on red-hot point-upwards ten-penny nails! In the Forest Queen bar-room was the biggest bank there was in town. Blister Mike--he was Irish, Blister was, and Sal's bar-keep--had some sort of a share in it; but it was run by a feller who'd got the name of Santa Fé Charley, he having had a bank over in Santa Fé afore Sal give him the offer to come across to Palomitas and take charge. He was one of the blue-eyed quiet kind, Charley was, that's not wholesome to monkey with; the sort that's extra particular about being polite and nice-spoken--and never makes no mistakes, when shooting-time comes, about shooting to kill. When he was sober, though--and he had to keep sober, mostly, or his business would a-suffered--he wasn't hunting after rumpusses: all he did was to keep ready for 'em, and hold his end up when they come along. He had the habit--same as some other of the best card sharps I've met with--of dressing himself in black, real stylish: wearing a long-tail coat and a boiled shirt and white tie, and having a toney wide-brimmed black felt hat that touched him off fine. With them regular fire-escape clothes on, folks was apt to take him for one; and, when they did, he always met 'em half-way by letting on preaching was his business--till he got 'em on the other side of the table and begun to shake down what cards he needed from up inside them black coat-sleeves. Mostly they ended by thinking that maybe preaching wasn't just what you might call his strongest hold.