From the seething street one could look up to the summit, and see there the graves of the many who had died deaths of violence, and been borne thither in "their boots." Amid all this surrounding desolation was Sheridan--the child of a few brief months of existence, and destined to perish almost as quickly--the centre of the grim picture, a mere cluster of rude, unpainted houses, poorly erected shacks, grimy tents flapping in the never ceasing wind swirling across the treeless waste, the ugly red station, the rough cow-pens filled with lowing cattle, the huge, ungainly stores, their false fronts decorated by amateur wielders of the paint brush, and the garish dens of vice tucked in everywhere.

The pendulum of life never ceased swinging.

Society was mixed; no man cared who his neighbor was, or dared to question.

Of women worthy the name there were few, yet there were flitting female forms in plenty, the saloon lights revealing powdered cheeks and painted eyebrows.

It was a strange, restless populace, the majority here to-day, disappearing to-morrow--cowboys, half-breeds, trackmen, graders, desperadoes, gamblers, saloon-keepers, merchants, generally Jewish, petty officials, and a riff-raff no one could account for, mere floating debris.