Then the little place resembled any cow-town at time of the county fair or the reunion of the Veterans of the Civil War, except that the crowd did not have a carnival spirit. The crowd was made up of cattle-men driven from their former pasture land, old adventurers still looking for a fortune, wanderers of all kinds, professional gamblers who resembled human buzzards, homeless stragglers from everywhere. There were old men with weather beaten faces from the Klondike, from the gold fields of Arizona, and old Mexico. There were poor, honest, but unsuccessful farmers from other states looking for new homes and considering this a kind of Promised Land for inability of all kinds. They came in _boomer wagons_. They came from every point of the compass. There were some successful Middle West farmers who had just sold their own land for a large price and brought their family here, hoping to get a new start for their sons. The crowd slept in _boomer wagons_; they slept on the ground; they slept on cots along the streets; they slept on the floors of empty buildings. Seventy-five thousand people were poured into a little village that had barely accommodations for ten thousand. It was hot. Everyone suffered. The ground was sun-baked until it cracked open in wide fissures. There had been no rain for four months. Daily the south wind blew until the atmosphere kept the hue of a twilight that did not change. The corn was burned and sere. The leaves withered; all the vegetation was colorless and dry. The intense heat was unchanging. The day was followed by a night without dew. The continued milling of horses, wagons, people on foot, ground up the dirt until it became an impalpable powder that penetrated everywhere, even the sides of the houses. And through all this dry, parching heat there was an agonizing lack of water. There were poor families here who had waited, in wagons, for years for the gift of this free land. There were legitimate people who really wanted homes and were willing to work for them. There was a large class too of shiftless, chronic boomers from the entire West, whose lives had been spent in looking for something for nothing. There were chronic wanderers seeking sensation. After this Strip Opening was over, they would sadly turn away, hoping for similar, fresh excitement somewhere else. It was a prohibition country, but saloons and gambling houses and houses of prostitution were open day and night. Everyone went armed. A man who did not have a gun upon his hip was something to remark about. The scarcity of water increased from day to day. Horses, dogs, and mules went about sadly with their swollen tongues hanging out. The entire prairie was parched like another Sahara. Over it bent a sky that was just as blue, just as cloudless, just as brazen and wind beaten.