Santa Fe's Partner by Thomas A. Janvier — Read

In the long run, same as I said to start with, all tough towns gets to where it's needed to have a clean-up. Shooting-scrapes is a habit that grows; and after a while decent folks begins to be sort of sick of such doings -- and of having things all upside-downey generally -- and then something a little extry happens, bringing matters to a head, and the white men take hold and the toughs is fired. Just to draw a card anywheres from the pack -- there was Durango. What made a clean town of Durango was that woman getting killed in bed in her tent -- the boys being rumpussing around, same as usual, and a shot just happening her way and taking her. It was felt that outsiders -- and 'specially ladies -- oughtn't to get no such treatment; and so they had a spring house-cleaning -- after what I reckon was the worst winter a town ever went through -- and Durango was sobered right down.

Palomitas went along the same trail, and took the same pass over the divide. All through that year, while the end of the track hung there, things kept getting more and more uncomfortabler. When construction started up again -- the little Englishman, in spite of the dose we give him, reported favorable on construction and the English stockholders put up the stake they was asked to -- things got to be worse still. Right away, as soon as work begun, the place was jammed full of Greasers getting paid off every Saturday night, and all day Sunday being crazy drunk and knifing each other, and in between scrappings having their pay sucked out of 'em at the banks and dance-halls -- and most of the boys going along about the same rate, except they used guns instead of knives to settle matters -- so the town really was just about what you might call a quarter-section of hell's front yard.