It was the end of the rainy season, and a wet night.

Brace and Parks were looking from the window over the swollen river, with faces quite as troubled as the stream below.

Nor was the prospect any longer the same.
In the past two years Buckeye had grown into a city.

They could now count a half dozen church spires from the window of the three-storied brick building which had taken the place of the old wooden Emporium, but they could also count the brilliantly lit windows of an equal number of saloons and gambling-houses which glittered through the rain, or, to use the words of a local critic, "Shone seven nights in the week to the Gospel shops' ONE!" A difficulty had arisen which the two men had never dreamed of, and a struggle had taken place between the two rival powers, which was developing a degree of virulence and intolerance on both sides that boded no good to Buckeye.

The disease which its infancy had escaped had attacked its adult growth with greater violence.