Desert Dust Part 2

"Now, young man, if you get shet of your foolishness and decide to try North Platte instead of some fly-by-night town on west," my seat companion addressed, "you jest follow me when I leave. We get to North Platte after plumb dark, and you hang onto my skirts right up town, till I land you in a good place. For if you don't, you're liable to be skinned alive."

"If I decide upon North Platte I certainly will take advantage of your kindness," I evaded. Forsooth, she had a mind to kidnap me!

"Now you're talkin' sensible," she approved. "My sakes alive! Benton!" And she sniffed. "Why, in Benton they'll s.n.a.t.c.h you bald-headed 'fore you've been there an hour."

She composed herself for another nap.

"If that pesky brakeman don't remember to wake me, you give me a poke with your elbow. I wouldn't be carried beyond North Platte for love or money."

She gurgled, she snored. The sunset was fading from pink to gold--a gold like somebody's hair; and from gold to lemon which tinted all the prairie and made it beautiful. Pursuing the sunset we steadily rumbled westward through the immensity of unbroken s.p.a.ce.

The brakeman came in, lighting the coal-oil lamps. Outside, the twilight had deepened into dusk. Numerous pa.s.sengers were making ready for bed: the men by removing their boots and shoes and coats and galluses and stretching out; the women by loosening their stays, with significant clicks and sighs, and laying their heads upon adjacent shoulders or drooping against seat ends. Babies cried, and were hushed. Final night-caps were taken, from the prevalent bottles.

The brakeman, returning, paused and inquired right and left on his way through. He leaned to me.

"You for North Platte?"

"No, sir. Benton, Wyoming Territory."

"Then you'd better move up to the car ahead. This car stops at North Platte."

"What time do we reach North Platte?"

"Two-thirty in the morning. If you don't want to be waked up, you'd better change now. You'll find a seat."

At that I gladly followed him out. He indicated a half-empty seat.

"This gentleman gets off a bit farther on; then you'll have the seat to yourself."

The arrangement was satisfactory, albeit the "gentleman" with whom I shared appeared, to nose and eyes, rather well soused, as they say; but fortune had favored me--across the aisle, only a couple of seats beyond, I glimpsed the top of a golden head, securely low and barricaded in by luggage.

Without regrets I abandoned my former seat-mate to her disappointment when she waked at North Platte. This car was the place for me, set apart by the salient presence of one person among all the others. That, however, is apt to differentiate city from city, and even land from land.

Eventually I, also, slept--at first by fits and starts concomitant with railway travel by night, then more soundly when the "gentleman," my comrade in adventure, had been hauled out and deposited elsewhere. I fully awakened only at daylight.

The train was rumbling as before. The lamps had been extinguished--the coach atmosphere was heavy with oil smell and the exhalations of human beings in all stages of deshabille. But the golden head was there, about as when last sighted.

Now it stirred, and erected a little. I felt the unseemliness of sitting and waiting for her to make her toilet, so I hastily staggered to achieve my own by aid of the water tank, tin basin, roller towel and small looking-gla.s.s at the rear--subst.i.tuting my personal comb and brush for the pair hanging there by cords.

The coach was the last in the train. I stepped out upon the platform, for fresh air.

We were traversing the real plains of the Great American Desert, I judged.

The prairie gra.s.ses had shortened to brown stubble interspersed with bare sandy soil rising here and there into low hills. It was a country without north, south, east, west, save as denoted by the sun, broadly launching his first beams of the day. Behind us the single track of double rails stretched straight away as if clear to the Missouri. The dull blare of the car wheels was the only token of life, excepting the long-eared rabbits scampering with erratic high jumps, and the prairie dogs sitting bolt upright in the sunshine among their hillocked burrows. Of any town there was no sign. We had cut loose from company.

Then we thundered by a freight train, loaded with still more ties and iron, standing upon a siding guarded by the idling trainmen and by an operator's shack. Smoke was welling from the chimney of the shack--and that domestic touch gave me a sense of homesickness. Yet I would not have been home, even for breakfast. This wide realm of nowhere fascinated with the unknown.

The train and shack flattened into the landscape. A bevy of antelope flashed white tails at us as they scudded away. Two motionless figures, horseback, whom I took to be wild Indians, surveyed us from a distant sand-hill. Across the river there appeared a fungus of low buildings, almost indistinguishable, with a glimmer of canvas-topped wagons fringing it. That was the old emigrant road.

While I was thus orienting myself in lonesome but not entirely hopeless fashion the car door opened and closed. I turned my head. The Lady of the Blue Eyes had joined me. As fresh as the morning she was.

"Oh! You? I beg your pardon, sir." She apologized, but I felt that the diffidence was more politic than sincere.

"You are heartily welcome, madam," I a.s.sured. "There is air enough for us both."

"The car is suffocating," she said. "However, the worst is over. We shall not have to spend another such a night. You are still for Benton?"

"By all means." And I bowed to her. "We are fellow-travelers to the end, I believe."

"Yes?" She scanned me. "But I do not like that word: the end. It is not a popular word, in the West. Certainly not at Benton. For instance----"

We tore by another freight waiting upon a siding located amidst a wide debris of tin cans, scattered sheet-iron, stark mud-and-stone chimneys, and barren spots, resembling the ruins from fire and quake.

"There is Julesburg."

"A town?" I gasped.

"The end." She smiled. "The only inhabitants now are in the station-house and the graveyard."

"And the others? Where are they?"

"Farther west. Many of them in Benton."

"Indeed? Or in North Platte!" I bantered.

"North Platte!" She laughed merrily. "Dear me, don't mention North Platte--not in the same breath with Benton, or even Cheyenne. A town of hayseeds and dollar-a-day clerks whose height of sport is to go fishing in the Platte! A young man like you would die of ennui in North Platte.

Julesburg was a good town while it lasted. People _lived_, there; and moved on because they wished to keep alive. What is life, anyway, but a constant shuffle of the cards? Oh, I should have laughed to see you in North Platte." And laugh she did. "You might as well be dead underground as buried in one of those smug seven-Sabbaths-a-week places."

Her free speech accorded ill with what I had been accustomed to in womankind; and yet became her sparkling eyes and general dash.

"To be dead is past the joking, madam," I reminded.

"Certainly. To be dead is the end. In Benton we live while we live, and don't mention the end. So I took exception to your gallantry." She glanced behind her, through the door window into the car. "Will you," she asked hastily, "join me in a little appetizer, as they say? You will find it a superior cognac--and we breakfast shortly, at Sidney."

From a pocket of her skirt she had extracted a small silver flask, stoppered with a tiny screw cup. Her face swam before me, in my astonishment.

"I rarely drink liquor, madam," I stammered.

"Nor I. But when traveling--you know. And in high and--dry Benton liquor is quite a necessity. You will discover that, I am sure. You will not decline to taste with a lady? Let us drink to better acquaintance, in Benton."

"With all my heart, madam," I blurted.

She poured, while swaying to the motion of the train; pa.s.sed the cup to me with a brightly challenging smile.

"Ladies first. That is the custom, is it not?" I queried.

"But I am hostess, sir. I do the honors. Pray do you your duty."

"To our better acquaintance, then, madam," I accepted. "In Benton."