The skin-hunting still went on.

Great wagons, loaded with parties of rough men, passed on out, bound for the inner haunts, where they might still find their prey.

The wagons came creaking back loaded with bales of the shaggy brown robes, which gave the skin-hunters money with which to join the cowmen at the drinking places.

Some of the skin-hunters, some of the railroad men, some of the cowmen, some of the home-seekers, remained in the eddy at Ellisville, this womanless beginning of a permanent society.

Not sinless was this society at its incipiency.