Next day but one Carver come down again on his regular run, and he told the boys the little man kept a-hanging onto the platform railing and a-looking back hard till the train got clean round the curve. Then he give a kind of a coughing groan, Carver said, and come inside the Pullman--there wasn't no other passengers that night in the Pullman--and plumped himself down on a seat anyways, a-looking as white as a clean paper collar; and for a while he just set there, like he had a pain. At last he roused up and reached for his grip and got his flask out and had a good one; and when he'd had it he says to Carver, as savage as if Carver--who hadn't had no hand in the doings--was the whole business: "Sir, this America of yours is a continent of chaos--and you Americans are no better than so many wild beasts!" Then he had another; and after that he went on, like he was talking to himself: "All I ask is to get out of this nightmare of a country in a hurry--and safe back to my own home in the Avenue Road!" And from then on, Carver said, till it was bedtime--except now and then he took another--he just set still and glared. Carver said it wasn't any funeral of his, and so he didn't see no need to argue with him. And he allowed, he said, maybe he had some call to feel the way he did about America, and to want to get quick out of it, after being up against Palomitas for what he guessed you might say was a full day. VII THE PURIFICATION OF PALOMITAS In the long run, same as I said to start with, all tough towns gets to where it's needed to have a clean-up. Shooting-scrapes is a habit that grows; and after a while decent folks begins to be sort of sick of such doings--and of having things all upside-downey generally--and then something a little extry happens, bringing matters to a head, and the white men take hold and the toughs is fired. Just to draw a card anywheres from the pack--there was Durango. What made a clean town of Durango was that woman getting killed in bed in her tent--the boys being rumpussing around, same as usual, and a shot just happening her way and taking her. It was felt that outsiders--and 'specially ladies--oughtn't to get no such treatment; and so they had a spring house-cleaning--after what I reckon was the worst winter a town ever went through--and Durango was sobered right down.