reputation of being a "tough" town. This is due in a large measure to
the fact that it is a division terminal, and at all division terminals
train crews must reckon with that element in our leisure class which
declines to pay railroad fare and elects to travel on brake-beams
rather than in Pullman sleepers. Having been unceremoniously plucked
from his precarious perch, the dispossessed hobo, finding himself
stranded in a desert town where the streets are not electrically
lighted, follows the dumb dictates of his stomach and the trend of his
abnormal ambition, and promptly "turns a trick." Occasionally there is
an objection on the part of the "trickee" and somebody gets killed.
Naturally enough, it follows that the sound of pistol shots is
frequently heard in the land, and since it happens nine times out of
ten that the argument is between transients, the permanent resident is
not nearly so interested in the outcome as one might imagine--
particularly when the shooting takes place at night and beyond the town
limits.

Harley P. Hennage had crossed from the eating-house, and had just
reached the porch of the Silver Dollar saloon, when above the whistling
of the "zephyr" he heard the muffled reports of three pistol shots. One
"Borax" O'Rourke, a "mule-skinner" from up Keeler way, who had just
arrived in San Pasqual to spend his pay-day after the fashion of the
country, heard them also.

"Down the tracks," O'Rourke elucidated. "Tramps fightin' with a
railroad policeman, I guess. Let's go down."

"What's the use?" objected Mr. Hennage. "A yegg never does any damage
unless he's right on top of his man. They all carry little short
bulldog guns, an' I never did see one o' them little bar pistols that