Mr. Jack Moffat, president of the Bachelor Miners' Pleasure Club, had
embraced the idea of a reception for Miss Spencer with unbounded
enthusiasm. Indeed, the earliest conception of such an event found
birth within his fertile brain, and from the first he determined upon
making it the most notable social function ever known in that portion
of the Territory.
Heretofore the pastime of the Bachelors' Club had been largely
bibulous, and the members thereof had exhibited small inclination to
seek the ordinary methods of social relaxation as practised in
Glencaid. Pink teas, or indeed teas of any conceivable color, had
never proved sufficiently attractive to wean the members from the
chaste precincts of the Occidental or the Miners' Retreat, while the
mysterious pleasure of "Hunt the Slipper" and "Spat in and Spat out"
had likewise utterly failed to inveigle them from retirement. But Mr.
Moffat's example wrought an immediate miracle, so that, long before the
fateful hour arrived, every registered bachelor was laboring
industriously to make good the proud boast of their enthusiastic
president, that this was going to be "the swellest affair ever pulled
off west of the Missouri."
The large space above the Occidental was secured for the occasion, the
obstructing subdivisions knocked away, an entrance constructed with an
outside stairway leading up from a vacant lot, and the passage
connecting the saloon boarded up. Incidentally, Mr. Moffat took
occasion to announce that if "any snoozer got drunk and came up them
stairs" he would be thrown bodily out of a window. Mr. McNeil, who was
observing the preliminary proceedings with deep interest from a pile of
lumber opposite, sarcastically intimated that under such circumstances
the attendance of club members would be necessarily limited. Mr.
Moffat's reply it is manifestly impossible to quote literally. Mrs.
Guffy was employed to provide the requisite refreshments in the
palatial dining-hall of the hotel, while Buck Mason, the vigilant town
marshal, popularly supposed to know intimately the face of every
"rounder" in the Territory, agreed to collect the cards of invitation
at the door, and bar out obnoxious visitors.
These preliminaries having been duly attended to, Mr. Moffat and his
indefatigable committee of arrangements proceeded to master the details
of decoration and entertainment, drawing heavily upon the limited
resources of the local merchants, and even invading private homes in
search after beautifying material. Jim Lane drove his buckboard one
hundred and sixty miles to Cheyenne to gather up certain needed
articles of adornment, the selection of which could not be safely
confided to the inartistic taste of the stage-driver. Upon his rapid
return journey loaded down with spoils, Peg Brace, a cow-puncher in the
"Bar O" gang, rode recklessly alongside his speeding wheels for the
greater portion of the distance, apparently in most jovial humor, and
so unusually inquisitive as to make Mr. Lane, as he later expressed it,
"plum tired." The persistent rider finally deserted him, however, at
the ford over the Sinsiniwa, shouting derisively back from a safe
distance that the Miners' Club was a lot of chumps, and promising them
a severe "jolt" in the near future.