The buoyant gold-seeker naturally craved the best, and he whose hopes had already been clashed, would take what he could best pay for -- generally known as "forty rod." Hence originated the saying that "Every drink contained a dance, a song and a fight." and it was the common lament of the frequenters of those places that if you stopped to watch a fight in one salocn, you would miss seeing two around the corner. As civilization advances, such conditions as these are surely outgrown and the change is sometimes brought about as quickly as a panorama. The North Western railroad built into the hills and the trail from Sidney to Deadwood ceased to be infested with the mounted highwayman and the animated metropolis lost its principal source of gaiety and coin. The settler, too, had forced the Indian from his patrimony and he had compelled the cattle kings to seek empires elsewhere, and with the passage of the Red Men went the necessity for the soldier. The fort was abandoned. The cowboy, who by this time had evoluted into the cow-puncher, had learned from experience the advantage of having some winter feed for his herd and natural water within his range, and having imbibed from the homesteader something of the spirit of agriculture, settled in the valleys and along the streams and turned ranchman -- a term which has since been understood as embracing both farmer and cattleman. For him who thus showed himself wiser in his generation than the homesteader proper, "life went merry as a marriage bell." for during this period of transition, which culminated in the eighties, a few years in the cycle of seasonable showers seemed to indicate that the rain belt extended as far west as the foothills. Hut those who prayed to Jupiter Pluvius instead of plowing their fields deep and conserving the moisture as it fell, soon felt that fate had laid its heavy