the opening, which would await the proclamation of the president, and might not come for several months.
Already the graders were gathering again at Drumwell in those late winter days, waiting the word of the engineers to go. There was a little acceleration of business with the establishment of the graders' camp, making it seem as of old, when Eddie Kane had his baby-board in front of the stretched canvas, and the jug from which his fortunes had enlarged beneath the goods box that did him for a counter.
There was some bootlegging—the term had its origin from liquor peddlers among the Indians, who smuggled half-pint bottles into the forbidden territory in their bootlegs—going on among the graders, as always. There were sordid cutting scrapes, the graders being no men for guns, and a good deal of moral depravity in general, graders being the scum of railroad life, take them where found.
But there was no great revival of hilarity in Drumwell. It seemed as if its life had been put out with the lights of Eddie Kane's hotel and bar. Mrs. Meehan had revived the jug trade of her railroading days, but that was such an unsatisfactory way of firing up as to carry little appeal to riders of the lonely places, to whom the greatest attraction was the sociability and lights, and strange phases of life attendant upon their far-spaced days of refreshment. Nobody but a soak could enjoy whisky passed out to him in a tin cup, with suspicions and misgivings.
So the days were slack in Drumwell, where the sharp lonesome yelping of lit-up cowboys was heard no more. Those who rode in now came to buy gloves and overalls, tobacco and boots. It is true that much more of their
