It took two days to unload. The evening of the third day Bilk and I stole away from the boat and went uptown. There was not much of it, to be sure, but what little there was lacked nothing in the way of life and color. One could see any sort of costume, from sober broadcloth and fine linen to the rainbow garb of a blanket Indian. Even the long-haired frontiersman sacred to fiction was represented by a specimen or two. Altogether it was a motley, high-spirited crowd that we mixed with that night. Of the quieter residential portion of Benton I saw nothing, that time. My way, guided thereto by Bilk, was down the main street, where lights shone and glasses clinked merrily; into divers places where ancient pianos tinkled dance music. Drink and dance and gamble, that was the night life of the town. Wherever we went, wherever any man went, up and down the length of that one garish street, he could get a run for his money, if he had money to spend. In every saloon and dance hall the knights of farobank and draw poker held tourney on the field of green cloth. It was all very new and strange and fascinating to me. Bilk stood treat in one of the saloons, and after we had emptied our glasses we stepped across the room to where a knot of men were watching an unkempt individual buck a roulette wheel with twenty-dollar gold pieces in lieu of chips. He had a dirty felt hat on the table before him, the crown of it half full of gold and silver, and he was scattering the double eagles two and three on a number. It was heavy play, I thought, but the dealer spun the little white ball and called the number and color in a bored sort of manner. The buffalo-runner lost half a dozen bets, and then all at once he caught the double O with three twenty-dollar coins resting on it. I gasped. Twenty-one hundred dollars in fifteen seconds! When the dealer passed over the stacks of gold, the unkempt one opened his mouth for the first time. “How much’ll yuh turn for?” he asked. The dealer jerked his thumb upward. “We’ll take the roof off,” he answered carelessly, “if yuh want to play ’em that high.” The buffalo-runner grinned and deliberately set about placing handfuls of coin here and there on the board. And while I stood there wholly engrossed, eagerly watching the ivory ball in its circular race, some one grabbed me by the shoulders and hurled me unceremoniously out the door. Once outside and free of that powerful grip, I turned and beheld Tupper the red-whiskered, very drunk and very angry, flourishing a pistol and shouting vile epithets at me. “Git back t’ the _Moon_, yuh —— son of a sea-cook! I’ll jerk an arm off yuh an’ beat yuh t’ death with the bloody end of it, if yuh show up here again. Scoot!”