He
saw a disintegrated crowd of travelers that had just arrived, and of
travelers ready to depart--soldiers, Indians, Mexicans, Negroes,
loafers, merchants, tradesmen, laborers, an ever-changing and ever-
remarkable spectacle of humanity. He saw stage-coaches with hawkers
bawling for passengers bound to Salt Lake, Ogden, Montana, Idaho; he
saw a wide white street--white with dust where it was not thronged
with moving men and women, and lined by tents and canvas houses and
clapboard structures, together with the strangest conglomeration of
painted and printed signs that ever advertised anything in the
world.
A woman, well clad, young, not uncomely, but with hungry eyes like
those of a hawk, accosted Neale. He drew away. In the din he had not
heard what she said. A boy likewise spoke to him; a greaser tried to
take his luggage; a man jostling him felt of his pocket; and as
Neale walked on he was leered at, importuned, jolted, accosted, and
all but mobbed.
So this was Benton.
A pistol-shot pierced the din. Some one shouted. A wave of the crowd
indicated commotion somewhere; and then the action and noise went on
precisely as before. Neale crossed five intersecting streets;
evidently the wide street he was on must be the main one.
In that walk of five blocks he saw thousands of persons, but they
were not the soldiers who protected the line, nor the laborers who
made the road.
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