The railroad men that I had seen at the station had been working on an extension of the grade to the west, on which the rails were to be laid the next spring. They had pushed on ten miles, but, as the government had stopped making a fuss, the company had decided to do no more that season, and the train I came up on brought the paymaster with the money to pay the graders for their summer's work; so they all got drunk. There were some men from Billings in town, too. They were on their way east with a band of four hundred Montana ponies, which they had rounded up for the night just south of town. Two of them stayed to hold the drove, and the rest came into town, also to get drunk. They had good luck in doing this, and fought with the graders. I heard two or three shots soon after I went to bed, and thought of my mother. Some time late in the night I was awakened by a great rumpus in the hotel, and made out from what I heard through the laths that some men were looking for somebody. They were going from room to room, and soon came into mine, tearing down the sheet which was hung up for a door. They crowded in and came straight to the bed, and the leader, a big man with a crooked nose, seized me by the ear as if he were taking hold of a bootstrap. I sat up, and another poked a lantern in my face. "That's him," said one of them. "No, he was older," said another. "He looks like he _would_ steal a dog, anyhow," said the man with the lantern. "Bring him along, Pike." "No," said the man who had hold of my ear, "he ain't much more'n a boy--we're looking for grown men to-night." Then they went out, and I could feel my ear drawing back into place as if it were made of rubber. But it never got quite back, and has always been a game ear to this day, with a kind of a lop to it. Sours told me in the morning that they were looking for the man that stole their dog, though he said he didn't think they had ever had a dog. Pike, he said, had come out as a grader, but it had been a long time since he had done any work. I took a look around town after breakfast and found forty or fifty houses, most of them stores or other places of business, on one street running north and south. There were a few, but not many, houses scattered about beyond the street. Some of the buildings had canvas roofs, and there were a good many tents and covered wagons in which people lived. The whole town had been built since the railroad came through two months before. There was a low hill called Frenchman's Butte a quarter of a mile north of town. I climbed it to get a view of the country, but could see only about a dozen settlers' houses, also just built.