The stage jingled up; and while the passengers piled out was surrounded by a jostling crowd of whiskered, red-shirted and blue-shirted and buckskin-shirted (as well as buckskin-patched) residents.
As it rolled away again, to put up for the night, Terry heard himself and Harry hailed by a familiar voice, at last.
"Well, I declare! Got through, did you—buffalo and mule and dog and all! What kind of a trip did you have?"
CHAPTER IX
NOW WHERE IS THE "ELEPHANT"?
It was Journalist Villard, tanned and whiskered, and already booted and shirted and armed like the rest of the inhabitants. He shook hands vigorously with them.
"Pretty fair," replied Harry. "We've just got in. You seem to be the only person we know here."
"I won't be that only person long," laughed Mr. Villard. "The ends of the world are gathering here at the rate of a thousand a day. Why, by that very stage arrived a banker I used to know well in Cincinnati, and another friend at whose house in New York I've often eaten dinner. But the reason I met the stage was that I rather expected to find in it Horace Greeley and A. D. Richardson. They're on the way."
"Not Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune?" queried Harry, as if astonished.