418 The Wilderness Hunter. 



" So I up and saddled the bronc' and lit out for home," 

 concluded the narrator with the air of one justly proud of 

 his own self-abnegating virtue. 



The " town " where the judge above-mentioned dwelt 

 was one of those squalid, pretentiously 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 frequently built entirely of canvas, and are 

 subject to grotesque calamities. When the territory pur- 

 chased from the Sioux, in the Dakotas, a couple of years 

 ago, was thrown open to settlement, there was a furious 

 inrush of men on horseback and in wagons, and various 

 ambitious, cities sprang up overnight. The new settlers 

 were all under the influence of that curious craze which 

 causes every true westerner 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 Omahas in every forlorn group of 

 tents pitched by some muddy stream in a desert of gumbo 

 and sage-brush ; and they named both the towns and the 

 canvas buildings in accordance with their bright hopes 

 for the morrow, rather than with reference to the mean 

 facts of the day. One of these towns, which when twenty- 

 four hours old boasted of six saloons, a " court-house," 



