“Oh, yes! oh, yes! can accommodate you all!” was the landlord’s reply to our hesitating inquiries.  He stood in the doorway of his dining-room; the streams of men we had seen going in and out were the fed and the unfed guests of the house.  It was supper time; we also were hungry.  We peered into the dining room:  three tables full of men; a huge pile of beds on the floor, covered with hats and coats; a singular wall, made entirely of doors propped upright; a triangular space walled off by sailcloth,—­this is what we saw.  We stood outside, waiting among the scaffolding and benches.  A black man was lighting the candles in a candelabrum made of two narrow bars of wood nailed across each other at right angles, and perforated with holes.  The candles sputtered, and the hot fat fell on the shavings below.

“Dangerous way of lighting a room full of shavings,” some one said.  The landlord looked up at the swinging candelabra and laughed.  “Tried it pretty often,” he said.  “Never burned a house down yet.”

I observed one peculiarity in the speech at Garland City.  Personal pronouns, as a rule, were omitted; there was no time for a superfluous word.

“Took down this house at Wagon Creek,” he continued, “just one week ago; took it down one morning while the people were eating breakfast; took it down over their heads; putting it up again over their heads now.”

This was literally true.  The last part of it we ourselves were seeing while he spoke, and a friend at our elbow had seen the Wagon Creek crisis.

“Waiting for that round table for you,” said the landlord; " ’ll bring the chairs out here’s fast’s they quit ’em.  That’s the only way to get the table.”

So, watching his chances, as fast as a seat was vacated, he sprang into the room, seized the chair and brought it out to us; and we sat there in our “reserved seats,” biding the time when there should be room enough vacant at the table for us to take our places.

What an indescribable scene it was!  The strange-looking wall of propped doors which we had seen, was the impromptu, wall separating the bedrooms from the dining-room.  Bedrooms?  Yes, five of them; that is, five bedsteads in a row, with just space enough between them to hang up a sheet, and with just room enough between them and the propped doors for a moderate-sized person to stand upright if he faced either the doors or the bed.  Chairs?  Oh, no!  What do you want of a chair in a bedroom which has a bed in it?  Washstands?  One tin basin out in the unfinished room.  Towels?  Uncertain.

The little triangular space walled off by the sailcloth was a sixth bedroom, quite private and exclusive; and the big pile of beds on the dining-room floor was to be made up into seven bedrooms more between the tables, after everybody had finished supper.

Luckily for us we found a friend here,—­a man who has been from the beginning one of Colorado’s chief pioneers; and who is never, even in the wildest wilderness, without resources of comfort.