He noted a cowboy sitting in his saddle while he rolled a cigarette.  Obviously he had come in to look things over rather than to share in the mining, and he made the one sane, critical note in the carnival of noise and color.  Donnegan began to pass stores.  There was the jeweler’s; the gent’s furnishing; a real estate office—­what could real estate be doing on the Young Muddy’s desert?  Here was the pawnshop, the windows of which were already packed.  The blacksmith had a great establishment, and the roar of the anvils never died away; feed and grain and a dozen lunch-counter restaurants.  All this had come to The Corner within six weeks.

Liquor seemed to be plentiful, too.  In the entire length of the street he hardly saw a sober man, except the cowboy.  Half a dozen in one group pitched silver dollars at a mark.  But he was in the saloon district now, and dominant among the rest was the big, unpainted front of a building before which hung an enormous sign: 

LEBRUN’S JOY EMPORIUM

Donnegan turned in under the sign.

It was one big room.  The bar stretched completely around two sides of it.  The floor was dirt, but packed to the hardness of wood.  The low roof was supported by a scattering of wooden pillars, and across the floor the gaming tables were spread.  At that vast bar not ten men were drinking now; at the crowding tables there were not half a dozen players; yet behind the bar stood a dozen tenders ready to meet the evening rush from the mines.  And at the tables waited an equal number of the professional gamblers of the house.

From the door Donnegan observed these things with one sweeping glance, and then proceeded to transform himself.  One jerk at the visor of his cap brought it down over his eyes and covered his face with shadow; a single shrug bunched the ragged coat high around his shoulders, and the shoulders themselves he allowed to drop forward.  With his hands in his pockets he glided slowly across the room toward the bar, for all the world a picture of the guttersnipe who had been kicked from pillar to post until self-respect is dead in him.  And pausing in his advance, he leaned against one of the pillars and looked hungrily toward the bar.

He was immediately hailed from behind the bar with:  “Hey, you.  No tramps in here.  Pay and stay in Lebrun’s!”

The command brought an immediate protest.  A big fellow stepped from the bar, his sombrero pushed to the back of his head, his shirt sleeves rolled to the elbow away from vast hairy forearms.  One of his long arms swept out and brought Donnegan to the bar.

“I ain’t no prophet,” declared the giant, “but I can spot a man that’s dry.  What’ll you have, bud?” And to the bartender he added:  “Leave him be, pardner, unless you’re all set for considerable noise in here.”

“Long as his drinks are paid for,” muttered the bartender, “here he stays.  But these floaters do make me tired!”