Edwin L. Sabin

“ I inquired.
“As far as we can while the fog hangs. Then we must hide in the first good place. If they don’t strike our trail we’ll be all right.”
The fog lingered in patches. From patch to patch we threaded, with many a glance over shoulder. But time was traveling faster. I marked her searching about nervously. Blue had already appeared above, the sun found us again and again, and the fog remnants went spinning and coiling, in last ghostly dance like that of frenzied wraiths.
Now we came to a rough outcrop of red sandstone, looming ruddily on our right. ”

“ The sounds from Benton—the hammering, the shouting, the babbling, the puffing of the locomotives—drifted faintly to us, merged into the cracking of whips and the oaths and songs by the wagon drivers along the road. Of our own little camp I took gradual stock.
It, like the desert reaches, evinced little of feverishness, for while booted men busied themselves at tasks similar to mine, others lolled, spinning yarns and whittling; the several women, at wash-boards and at 164 pots and pans and needles, worked contentedly in sun and shade ”

“ Then at sunset we made corral; against theft, when near the grade; against Indians and pillage when out from the grade, with the animals under herd guard. There were fires, there was singing at the Mormon camp, there was the heavy sleep beneath blanket and buffalo robe, through the biting chill of a breezeless night, the ground a welcomed bed, the stars vigilant from horizon to horizon, the wolves stalking and bickering like avid ghouls.
So we dulled to the falsity of the desert and the drudgery of the trail ”

“ Nevertheless there was a wild grandeur in the site, flooded all with crimson as the sun sank in the clear western sky beyond the Plains themselves, so that our plateau was still bathed in ruddy color when the Red Basin upon the one hand had deepened to purple and the white blotches of soda and alkali down in the Plains upon the other hand gleamed evilly in a tenuous gloaming.
We had corralled adjacent to another tainted pond, of which the animals refused to drink but which furnished a little rank forage for them and an oasis for a half dozen ducks. ”

“ The high desert stretched vastly, far, far, far before, behind, on either side, the parched gauntness of its daytime aspect assuaged and evanescent. For the moon, now risen, although on the wane, shed a light sufficient, whitening the rocks and the scattered low shrubs, painting the land with sharp black shadows, and enclosing us about with the mystery of great softly illumined spaces into which silent forms vanished as if tempting us aside. ”

“ In the estimate of the affable brakeman (a gentleman wearing sky-blue army pantaloons tucked into cowhide boots, half-buttoned vest, flannel shirt open at the throat, and upon his red hair a flaring-brimmed black slouch hat) we were making a fair average of twenty miles an hour across the greatest country on earth. It was a flat country of far horizons, and for vast stretches peopled mainly, as one might judge from the car windows, by antelope and the equally curious rodents styled prairie dogs. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Yet why I had to, I wondered; but when I had bought my ticket for Benton I had started the sequence, to this result. Here I was. As she had said, here I was, and here she was. I might not kill for love—no, not that; I was going to kill for hate. And while I never had killed a man, and in my heart of hearts did not wish to kill a man, since I had to kill one, named Daniel, even though he was a bully, a braggart and an infernal over-stepper it was pleasanter to think that I should kill him in hot blood rather than in cold.
Jenks spat, and yawned. ”

“ The Queen Hotel, the Big Tent, the rows of canvas, plank, tin, sheet metal, what-not stores, saloons, gambling dens, dance halls, human habitations—the blatant street and the station itself had subsided into this: a skeleton company of hacked and weazened posts, a fantastic outcrop of coldly blackened clay chimneys, a sprinkling of battered cans. The fevered populace who had ridden high 315 upon the tide of rapid life had remained only as ghosts haunting a potter’s field, and the turmoil of frenzied pleasure had dwindled to a coyote’s yelp mocking the twilight. ”

“ As far as Fremont the country along the railroad had been well settled with farms and unfenced cultivated fields. Now we had issued into the untrammeled prairies, here and there humanized by an isolated shack or a lonely traveler by horse or wagon, but in the main a vast sun-baked dead sea of gentle, silent undulations extending, brownish, clear to the horizons. ”

“ The engagement sent me to my blanket cogitating. When a woman proposes, one never knows precisely the reason. Anyway, I was young enough so to fancy. For a long time I lay outside the wagons, apart in the desert camp, gazing up at the twinkling stars, while the wolves whimpered around, and somewhere she slept beside the gentle Rachael, and somewhere Daniel snored, and here I conned her face and her words, elatedly finding them very pleasing.
Salt Lake was far, the Big Tent farther by perspective if not by miles. ”

“ I had opportunity also to note the jet pendant in the shelly ear toward me, and the flashing rings upon the fingers of her hands, ungloved in order to sort out the money from her reticule.
Sooth to say, I might not stand there gawking. Once, by a demure sideways glance, she betrayed knowledge of my presence. Her own transaction was all matter-of-fact, as if engaging passage to Benton of Wyoming Territory contained no novelty for her. ”

“ Benton—the Benton to which, as to prosperity, I had hopefully purchased my ticket 142 ages ago. And here cowered I, holed up—pillaged, dishonored, worthless in even this community: a young fellow in jaunty frontier costume, new and brave, but really reduced to sackcloth and ashes; a young fellow only a husk, as false in appearance as the Big Tent itself and many another of those canvas shells.
The street noises—shouts, shots, music, songs, laughter, rattle of dice, whirr of wheel and clink of glasses—assailed me discordant. ”

“ Until the train should be made up I might only 17 stroll, restless and strangely buoyed, with that vision of an entrancing fellow traveler filling my eyes. Summoned in due time by the clamor “Passengers for the Pacific Railway! All aboard, going west on the Union Pacific!” here amidst the platform hurly-burly of men, women, children and bundles I had the satisfaction to sight the black-clad figure of My Lady of the Blue Eyes; hastening, like the rest, but not unattended—for a brakeman bore her valise and the conductor her parasol. ”

“ Our sorely laden train went swaying and pitching across the gaunt face of a high, broad plateau, bleak, hot, and monotonous in contour; underfoot the reddish granite pulverized by grinding tire and hoof, over us the pale bluish fiery sky without a cloud, distant in the south the shining tips of a mountain range, and distant below in the west the slowly spreading vista of a great, bared ocean-bed, simmering bizarre with reds, yellows and deceptive whites, and ringed about by battlements jagged and rock hewn. ”

“ The teamsters viewed the unfolding expanse phlegmatically. They called it the Red Basin. But to me, fresh for the sight, it beckoned with fantastic issues. Even the name breathed magic. Wizard spells hovered there; the railroad had not broken them—the cars and locomotives, entering, did not disturb the brooding vastness. A man might still ride errant into those slumberous spaces and discover for himself; might boldly awaken the realm and rule with a princess by his side.
But romance seemed to have no other sponsor in this plodding, whip-cracking, complaining caravan. ”

“ To the exclamations, the riotous shouts and whoops, the general gay vociferations and the footsteps of a busy people, the harangues of the barkers, the more distant puffing and shrieking of the locomotives at the railroad yards, the hammering where men and boys worked by torchlight, and now and then a revolver shot, there had been added the inciting music of stringed instruments, cymbals, and such—some in dance measures, some solo, while immediately at hand sounded the shuffling stamp of waltz, hoe-down and cotillion. ”

“ Outside, the twilight had deepened into dusk. Numerous passengers 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Wrenching from the vision she handed back the revolver to me. “I think you’re going to do, sir. Only, you must learn to draw. I can tell you but I can’t show you. The men will. You must draw swiftly, decisively, without a halt, and finger on trigger and thumb on hammer and be ready to shoot when the muzzle clears the scabbard. It’s a trick.”
“Like this?” I queried, trying.
“Partly. But it’s not a sword you’re drawing; it’s a gun. You may draw laughing, if you wish to dissemble for a sudden drop; they do, when they have iron in their heart and the bullet already on its way, in their mind. ”

“ Side by side we fronted the group as if we might have been partners—which, in a measure, we were, but not wholy according to the lout Daniel’s cackle and the suddenly interrogating countenances here and there.
“You would take her in, Rachael?” the Captain rumbled. “Have you not heard what I said?”
“We are commanded to feed the hungry and shelter the homeless, Hyrum.”
“Verily that is so. Take her. I trust you with her till the morning. The Lord will direct us further. But in God’s name clothe her for the daylight in decency. She shall not advertise her flesh to men’s eyes.” ”

“ That I was here, with my woman, my partner woman, the much desirable woman whom I had won; which was more than Daniel, or Montoyo, or the Indian chief, or the wide world of other men could boast.
Soon she spoke, at times, musingly.
“I did make up to you, at first,” she said. “In Omaha, and on the train.”
“Did you?” I smiled. She was so childishly frank.
“But that was only passing. Then in Benton I knew you were different. I wondered what it was; but you were different from anybody that I had met 303 before. There’s always such a moment in a woman’s life.” ”

“ I lifted my smarting eyes, and across the hot sheet-iron roofs I saw the country south—a white-blotched reddish desert stretching on, desolate, lifeless under the sunset, to a range of stark hills black against the glow.
“There are no private rooms, then?” I asked, choking with a gulp of despair.
“You are perfectly private right here, suh,” assured the Colonel. “You may strip to the hide or you may sleep with your boots on, and no questions asked. Gener’ly speaking, gentlemen prefer to retain a layer of artificial covering—but you ain’t troubled much with the bugs, are you, Bill?” ”

“ Jim responded. “I’ll pick out the queen ag’in for a dollar.”
The gambler smiled grimly and shrugged his shoulders.
“Oh, pshaw, sir. These are small stakes. You’ll never get rich at that rate and neither shall I.”
“I reckon I can set my own limit,” Jim grumbled.
“Yes, sir. But let’s have action. Who’ll join this gentleman in his guess? Who’ll back his luck? He’s a winner, I admit that.”
The gray eyes dwelt upon face and face of our half circle; and still I, too, hesitated, although my dollar was burning a hole in my pocket. ”

“ The Indians had grouped; several had dismounted, peering closely at our trail, reading it, timing it, accurately estimating it. They had no difficulty, for the hoof prints were hardly dried of the fog moisture. The others sat idly, searching the horizons with their eyes, but at confident ease. In the wide expanse this rock fortress of ours seemed to me to summon imperatively, challenging them. They surely must know. ”

“ We had camped well beyond a last bunch of the red-shirted graders, so that the thread of a trail wended before, lonely, sand-obscured, leading apparently nowhere, through this desert devoid of human life. Line stakes of the surveyors denoted the grade; but the surveyors’ work was done, here. Rush orders from headquarters had sent them all westward still, to set their final stakes across other deserts and across the mountains, clear to Ogden at the north end of the Salt Lake itself. ”