Part 11 (1/2)
To this Lawrence quietly says, ”No, I'll put him in my section,” but on arriving there with the boy in his arms, he finds Erma standing beside him, and whispering, ”My stateroom, please. It's quieter in there.”
On hearing her voice, the young man looks at her a moment as if in thought; then shortly says, ”Yes, it is best as you say. Thank you, Miss Travenion,” and carries the boy in.
She can see him very tenderly brush the matted hair from off the sufferer's face, and hears about her, from excited pa.s.sengers, that Captain Lawrence had risked his life to save that of a waif of the railroad.
A moment after the doctor comes, and making a short examination, the man of science says that the boy is only generally bruised and shaken up, and will come around all right if he is made quiet and sent to sleep, and would give him an opiate, did not Buck cry out piteously, ”Don't make me insensible, Doc. My box is open, and the train hands will eat all my candies and peanuts and Californey fruit, and bust me up in business.”
”I'll attend to that, Buck,” answers the captain quietly. ”I'll lock up your boxes,” and getting the key from the boy, he bows slightly to Miss Travenion and goes out of the car on his errand, pursued by the grateful eyes of this Arab of the railroad. A moment after the doctor puts the boy to sleep, and Erma steps out of her stateroom, to find that, Harry having departed, the pa.s.sengers on the car are discussing him very generally, though in low tones of voice, as if fearing to disturb the slumbering invalid.
Their conversation gives her a new idea of Captain Lawrence, for she learns the opinion of those who have lived near him and are acquainted with frontier habits and frontier methods; and they tell her that this young man is respected and honored for the very deeds which she has condemned in him and for which she has cut him off from the smiles of her face and the words from her lips.
She hears expressions of admiration on all sides, and one man, a miner from Colorado, and at present interested in the workings of a big coal property near Evanston, says: ”That fellow who risked his life to save that foolish news-boy is 'clean-grit.' He and a few others like him, made some of the towns on this railroad habitable. A man's life wasn't safe in Cheyenne, but they wiped out every desperado, cut-throat and bunco-steerer in that town, and now it is comfortable to live in.”
A moment after expressing this opinion, this gentleman is rather astonished to find the beautiful young lady from the East sitting beside him and saying in anxious voice: ”You think Vigilance Committees right?
You have had experience. Tell me all about them.”
”They are right, if self-preservation is,” he answers. Then, being a man of wide Western experience, and noting the anxious look on the girl's face, he tells her that the average frontier desperado is very careful of his own life, though very careless of that of others, and if he is certain of dying twenty-four hours afterwards, he will do no murder. And he gives her a little history of Vigilance Committees in general, and tells her how at White Pine, the first rush into that mining camp being composed of old California and Nevada miners, they had said, ”This will be a red-hot place for cut-throats, bullies and blacklegs,” and had organized a Vigilance Committee _before_ they built the town of Hamilton; and there had never been a murder in it, until long after the Vigilance Committee and nearly all other inhabitants left it; and that Pioche, one hundred and thirty miles away, with a population similar to Hamilton, had averaged eighteen homicides a day, most of them wilful murders, simply because the men who committed them knew that they would not be avenged, there being no Vigilance Committee in that place; then, warming to his subject, he goes on with the history of early Montana, when it was impossible for any man to carry gold from Helena to Salt Lake City and live through the trip; and people wondered why none of the highwaymen who robbed, looted and murdered on that trail through Southern Idaho to Utah were never brought to justice, and that a Vigilance Committee was formed, and the first man they hung in the Territory was the sheriff, and that after that they continued their work with such success that for eight years thereafter no homicide was committed in all Montana.
Next getting excited, he winds up by saying, ”The best citizens of these places were Vigilance men. There was no law, but they made peace; there was no justice, but they made the land free from blood,” and is astonished at the end of this discourse to receive a grateful ”Thank you,” from the young lady, whose eyes seem to have grown happier during his lecture upon the morality of Lynch law.
Then, Miss Travenion, some load seeming to have been lifted from her mind, turns to her stateroom, to watch over the sleeping news-boy. As she sits gazing at the rec.u.mbent invalid, she wonders, ”Why should I be happy to hear that Harry Lawrence is not regarded as a murderer by those who have seen him kill?” and while musing upon this, the boy opens his eyes, for the effect of the opiate has pa.s.sed off, Erma's conversation with the Western man having been a long one.
A moment after, he says faintly, ”If you please, Miss, I would like to go back to business. This trip ain't goin' to pay me nothing.”
”You lay quiet, Buck,” whispers the girl. ”I'll attend to your business for you,” for a sudden idea has come into Erma's head. She steps lightly out into the car, and taking off her straw hat, throws a greenback into it, and goes about among the pa.s.sengers of the Pullmans, taking up a collection for the injured waif, which nets him a great deal more than the profits of his trip would have been, even were he in good health and pursuing his business with his usual keenness.
Coming in from this, she shakes the money joyfully before the boy's eyes and laughs, ”What kind of a news-agent do you think I make? There are the profits of the trip, Buck. Take some of this lemonade and go to sleep again.”
To which the boy murmurs, ”You would make a corker. They'd buy two-year-old peaches from you--they would,” drinks down the beverage her white hand places at his lips, and so goes to sleep again.
All this time the train, which seems to rattle along very merrily to the girl, has been leaving the valley of the Green River--that stream which flows between sandstones that, rising hundreds of feet above its banks, have the appearance of domes and mediaeval castles and cathedrals, making it as picturesque as the Rhine, only much more grand; for far below, on its course to the blue Gulf of California, its cliffs from hundreds of feet grow into thousands, and its cathedrals and domes and palaces and ruins are those of giants, not of men, for this river is really the Colorado, and its Grand Canon is the most sublime spectacle of the whole American continent, not even excepting the tremendous mountains and glaciers of the British Northwest.
So, after a few hours' running over plateaux nearly as barren as the Sahara Desert, though they would blossom like the garden of Gethsemane could irrigation ever be brought to them, they approach the high tablelands at Piedmont, and climbing through long snow sheds to Aspen Hill, run down the valley of the Bear River, by which stream the train winds its way to Evanston, the last town in Wyoming Territory.
As they progress westward, Miss Travenion leaves the sleeping boy, and coming to Mrs. Livingston's stateroom, finds that lady in conversation with Mr. Kruger, who seems to be very happy at getting back to his Utah home.
”You will soon find yourself in a beautiful land,” he says. ”You see them great mountains down thar?” He points to the Uintah Range, whose peaks go up into the blue sky at the south like a great snowy saw.
”Down in thar is a valley, one of the purtiest pieces of grazing land and farming property in the whole Territory, Kammas Praharie, and I've got as pretty a ranch down there as in Utah, and lots of cattle and horses, and in my house four as nice-looking young--” He checks himself as suddenly at the last of this speech as if he were struck with a club.
Which Ferdie noticing, asks, ”Why are you always snapping your jaws together before you finish your sentences? One would think you had something to conceal.”
”Not much!” replies the accused, his face getting very red, however.
”Any one can investigate the life of Lot Kruger, and find that he's as upright and above board as the Lot of the Scriptures, and what he has done has been did with the advice and sanction of his church, and that's more, I reckon, than you can say, young man, though you're not much over kid high yit!”
But any further discussion is stopped by the train running into Evanston, where are the great coal mines. Here they take dinner, and Miss Travenion has hopes of gaining conversation with Captain Lawrence, but she only succeeds in seeing him at a distance, and thinks he looks very stern, which is the truth, for he has just received some telegrams from Salt Lake about his mining property that by no means please him. He would doubtless brighten up, however, did he but know that the girl is very anxious to say a few words to him and even offer a generous apology to this Vigilante,--this ”man of blood.”
After a little, a couple of locomotives helping them over a slight grade, they come into Echo Canon, and begin to descend to the valley of the Great Salt Lake; then going on, the Weber River comes in from the south, where the melting streams of the Uintah Mountains give it birth.
So skirting the willow and cottonwood banks of this beautiful stream, they run by the Thousand Mile Tree and the Devil's Slide and the old Mormon bridge; and many little hamlets and orchards, which seem very green and beautiful to the girl after the long, weary stretches of desert she has just left, till they come to the Narrows, where two great mountains of the Wahsatch appear to bar the pa.s.sage. But the cliffs open, and the train bursts through to where the valley of Salt Lake is spread before them, and Erma sees the inland sea she has often read about, as the cars run down towards it 'mid green pastures and lowing cattle and thrifty orchards, for it is where the Mormons have set their home in the wilderness, and by the arts of peace have made a land of plenty, in order to uphold a form of government which, like that of the ancient Druids, is founded on blood atonement and the sacrifice of its unbelievers and its enemies.
But here the girl suddenly thinks of her invalid, and going back to her stateroom, finds Buck sitting up, and again ready to battle with the world.