This description of a Western town, while not very profound, did two important things: 1) It established the key ingredients for a Western Town and 2) It gave several values that might occur in a default Western Town. (Any more than three stables and the place starts to stink)

WesternTown

• has a certain number of stables
• has a certain number of saloons
• has a certain number of sheriffs
• has a certain number of troublemakers
• is located somewhere
• exists at a certain time

A typical WesternTown would have

• number of stables = 3
• location = Western America
• time period = 1850

It may seem that Laura has a strange way of writing, but to her, it's straightforward. The first line on the page states that Laura is defining a Western town. You may have noticed that when Laura needs to write two words, she won't use a space. There is a reason for this. If she puts spaces in, her editor in New York, a stickler for details, gets confused.

The next step, logically, is to then declare what sorts of variables (those things which define how the town looks) that a class of Western towns might have. Sheriffs, stables, troublemakers, etc. That being said, all that was left to do was to construct a sample town, with default values for her variables.