Franklin had not advised his friend Battersleigh of his intended arrival, but as he looked about him he saw that he had little need for any guide.

Ellisville as an actual town did not yet exist.  A rude shanty or two and a line of tents indicated the course of a coming street.  The two hotels mentioned by Battersleigh were easily recognised, and indeed not to be evaded.  Out of the middle of this vast, treeless plain the great stone hotel arose, with no visible excuse or palliation, a deliberate affront to the solitude which lay far and wide about.  Even less within the bounds of reason appeared the wooden building which Franklin learned was the Cottage.  “Surely,” thought he, “if the railroad company had been mad in building the stone hotel, much worse must have been the man who erected this rambling wooden structure, hoping for customers who must come a thousand miles.”  Yet was this latter mad act justified before his very eyes.  The customers had come.  More than forty cow ponies stood in the Cottage corral or in the street near by.  Afar there swelled the sound of morning revelries.

Franklin wanted breakfast, and instinctively turned toward the stone hotel at the depot, where he learned were quartered the engineers and contractors on the railroad work.  He seated himself at one of the many tables in the vast, barren dining room.  Half the attendants were haughty young women, and half rather slovenly young men.

Franklin fell under the care of one of the latter, who greeted him with something of the affection of an old acquaintance.  Coming to the side of his chair, and throwing an arm carelessly across Franklin’s shoulder, the waiter asked in a confidential tone of voice, “Well, Cap, which’ll you have, hump or tongue?” Whereby Franklin discovered that he was now upon the buffalo range, and also at the verge of a new etiquette.

After breakfast Franklin paused for a moment at the hotel office, almost as large and empty as the dining room.  Different men now and then came and passed him by, each seeming to have some business of his own.  The clerk at the hotel asked him if he wanted to locate some land.  Still another stranger, a florid and loosely clad young man with a mild blue eye, approached him and held some converse.

“Mornin’, friend,” said the young man.

“Good-morning,” said Franklin.

“I allow you’re just in on the front,” said the other.

“Yes,” said Franklin, “I came on the last train.”

“Stay long?”

“Well, as to that,” said Franklin, “I hardly know, but I shall look around a bit.”

“I didn’t know but maybe you’d like to go south o’ here, to Plum Centre. 
I run the stage line down there, about forty-six miles, twict a week. 
That’s my livery barn over there—­second wooden building in the town. 
Sam’s my name; Sam Poston.”

“I never heard of Plum Centre,” said Franklin, with some amusement.  “Is it as large a place as this?”