256 Hunting the Grisly 



The "town" where the judge above-men- 

 tioned dwelt was one of those squalid pre- 

 tentiously named little clusters of makeshift 

 dwellings which on the edge of the wild 

 country spring up with the rapid growth of 

 mushrooms, and are often no longer lived. 

 In their earlier stages these towns are fre- 

 quently built entirely of canvas, and are sub- 

 ject to grotesque calamities. When the terri- 

 tory purchased from the Sioux, in the Da- 

 kotas, a couple of years ago, was thrown open 

 to settlement there was a furious inrush of men 

 on horseback and in wagons, and various am- 

 bitious cities sprang up overnight. The new 

 settlers were all under the influence of that 

 curious craze which causes every true West- 

 erner to put unlimited faith in the unknown 

 and untried ; many had left all they had in a 

 far better farming country, because they were 

 true to their immemorial belief that, wherever 

 they were, their luck would be better if they 

 went somewhere else. They were always on 

 the move, and headed for the vague beyond. 

 As miners see visions of all the famous mines 

 of history in each new camp, so these would-be 

 city founders saw future St. Pauls and Oma- 

 has in every forlorn group of tents pitched by 

 some muddy stream in a desert of gumbo and 



