Dan came in last evening quite disturbed over his failure to collect his wages on the completion of the work. He worked very cheap for this contractor, who seems to employ many floaters, and now he is refused the little money that is due him. He went uptown this morning, and returned about four o’clock enraged and disheartened. It seems that his employer makes a business of hiring men who drift into town, at as low a wage as possible; then beats them out of the money altogether, if he can. At times some unfortunate, whose spirit is not yet broken, threatens violence, in which case a trip to jail and a month on the chain-gang curb, if not cure, his desire for justice. When Dan hinted at reprisals, legal or otherwise, it was suggested that the Cheyenne climate was wont to prove unhealthy for such as he, so it would be well for him to seek new fields while the going was good. Inasmuch as we have no standing in this community, besides possessing less than three dollars in cash, which would not go far toward lawyer’s fees or bail money, it would seem that this advice, bitter as it is, should be followed. FIFTEEN _August 2nd_, LARAMIE, WYOMING. FIFTEEN _August 2nd. Laramie, Wyoming._ A faint sunset glow illumined the dry, brown plain as we approached the grade west of Cheyenne. A pungent odour rose from under foot as we trailed through the low brush, and as we approached the track, the rails set up a low humming that steadily increased in pitch and volume. A glaring eye appeared in the distance. I had never attempted to board a train in rapid motion and was more or less ignorant of ladders, hand holds and other details of car construction, and the idea of leaping on the roaring mass that came thundering through the semidarkness appalled me. Nearer and nearer drew the engine. The fierce glow of the furnace, as the fireman laboured to fill the insatiable maw, gleamed red upon the gravelled track. Black smoke rolled from the stack and hung low in the quiet air. With laboured pants, like an exhausted leviathan, the great machine lurched past. Dan caught my hand and we ran beside the track. Car after car clanked by. The hammering wheels seemed hungry for a victim. My eyes visioned the ghastly death of an unknown man, whose life had been ground out but a scant half hour before we had discovered the mangled remains. I saw myself, hampered with clinging skirts and weighted with a heavy bundle, clinging, slipping, falling between the ravening wheels, and a deadly nausea seized me. With a half stifled cry I turned down the embankment. Dan pulled and exhorted in vain. “It’s no use,” I said doggedly. “I just can’t do it.” The tail-lights of the caboose faded from view.