One time a "bad man" drifted into Cheyenne, and his name was enough to strike terror to tenderfeet. "Red Path Bill" was a dread combination. "Bill" was a favorite name in the wild first years of the west, especially if the person was a bad man; but "Red Path" prefixed would certainly indicate for a bad man nothing less than a trail of human gore.

Red Path Bill was hungry -- voracious for human bones to crush in his mighty jaws, and

HISTORY OF WESTERN NEBRASKA

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he was famishing for drink -- red liquor of the first magnitude, and mixed with human blood. He could not be appeased. Pounds of steak -- blood raw -- or such stale things as coffee and common bar drinks, could not satisfy such an appetite as he possessed.

So he rambled from place to place, until he found the place of Harry Hynds.

Hynds came to Cheyenne in the early years, and had joined with a man named Elliott in the trade of blacksmithing. He had a strong arm, and was not afraid to use it ; and he was also a reader of human character. He quit blacksmithing, and opened an emporium of entertainment and refreshments. There he had to know the science of humankind to survive.

His business developed, and at the time Red Path Bill appeared, the place contained a vestibule, with cigars and the like ; and behind swinging doors of mahogany was a mahogany bar and crystal glass, and then a third room separated from the second by swinging doors of green. In this latter room were the choice of any number of tame amusements : the faro box, the roulette wheel, monte, twenty-one, craps, poker, and sometimes keno.