money poured into the place from the great herds on the rich prairie lands around.
The town had been built on cattle, and on cattle its hope of future greatness rested. The railroad had reached out to it across the sea of prairie like the needle of a compass to its pole, and was building on into the West to open new worlds for canned goods to overcome. Out of Cottonwood supplies went into this new country, and into Cottonwood the wild-eyed herds were driven for shipment, all combining to make it a busy place. No restriction had been put on the traffic in alcoholic liquor at that time in that part of the country, and in Cottonwood there was a good deal of lurid life, a right smart of shooting and slashing around. Uncle Boley Drumgoole had seven pairs of boots, standing on the little shelf at his back, which had been ordered and paid for by men who did not live to enjoy them.
So it was in this atmosphere, if you can sense it hurriedly from the little sniff that has been given to you here, that Uncle Boley was sewing a bootleg on a calm autumn morning, his beard tucked out of the way under his left suspender. He was thinking on marriage and taking in marriage, as he usually occupied his thoughts when alone, and of the correspondence that he had struck up with a lively widow in Topeka, when the frame of a man dark-
