But this is some of Cheyenne in 1872 to 1875. Go to Cheyenne today--and what do you find? Nothing like this, that's certain. It is doubtful if you will round up more than a handful of men who remember there ever was such a place as Allen's "Gold Room" or the McDaniels' Variety, or even Tim Dyer's Tin Restaurant--tin because the plates and cups were tin when the big place was first opened. But see Cheyenne today. There isn't a city 200 years old on the Atlantic coast that has more civilization, a finer lot of railroad men, more culture and good order to the square yard. Cheyenne had a bad reputation, but it soon reformed when the natural resources of Wyoming began to be developed, and today, while we who pioneered it there so many years ago spoke of it as a "desert metropolis," are witnessing every little while either in agricultural or horticultural shows its progress in wheatfield and orchard. CHAPTER XI THE LOST INDIAN AT BEDTICK CREEK. This Indian was lost--something that has rarely happened. No Indian could use a compass if he had one, and he wouldn't if he could--not the real Indian of the days of General Custer, Buffalo Bill and a few others. Indian instinct beats any mechanical contrivance man has invented for white sailors, hunters, explorers and lumber cruisers. But the full-blood of this story was lost and was bleating like a sheep away from its flock, and just as timid and gentle. A lost Indian, and a proud, high cheek-boned, breech-clouted, bronzed specimen, too; six feet tall in his moccasins--hungry, unarmed, footsore, tribeless. He came into the camp of the wagon train at Bedtick Creek not far from the site of the deserted and famous overland stage station run by Jules Slade, whose life was saved by his wife, who rode 200 miles on a horse from Julesburg to a gold camp in Montana just in time to stop the lynching being conducted by the Vigilantes. And the day the Lost Indian was found was Christmas, a time when every man--plainsman and mountaineer, far from civilization and living in the open, as well as those toasting their shins at comfortable firesides in snug homes in "God's country"--has a sense of something mysteriously elevating in his soul. Everyone in the frost-bitten bunch of overland freighters knew his program for the day was to have no change so far as the bill of fare of bacon, beans and venison was concerned, and everyone thought it was pretty good; but there was to be no Christmas tree or happy children--no church services or anything else--everyone was contented, nevertheless, and surely full of the spirit of the day, though far out of reach of anything that would give the slightest flavor to a proper celebration, even informally.