Part 20 (2/2)

”Poor, lonely soul!” exclaimed Miss Campbell, wiping the moisture from her eyes. ”Where are his people, I wonder?”

”He hasn't any,” answered Nancy. ”His father was a miner and he died when Jim was a little boy. He's worked in lumber camps and lived around like this all his life. I think he's very gentlemanly, considering. He says Tony has taught him a lot. Jim is only eighteen, you know, although he looks much older.”

Deep down in her heart Miss Campbell made a resolution that she would like to do something very nice for Jim.

They slept that night at Cheyenne, which had once been a rude little frontier town, and was now a handsome city, and the next day pushed on toward Laramie. After riding hundreds of miles over level prairie grounds, the eyes become accustomed to wide stretches of landscape and the mind, too, takes a broader and more generous outlook on life. What is called ”the peace of the plains” seems to brood over the traveler.

Our five motorists were filled with this quietude as they went Westward.

All the difficulties of the trip and past dangers were forgotten. They were as peaceful as holy pilgrims journeying toward Mecca. At last, late in the afternoon, Billie suddenly stopped the car and pointed silently toward the setting sun. She had caught her first glimpse of the Rocky Mountains.

Far in the distance they lay, the first vague misty opalescent peaks of the great chain which divides the West into countries. They were only the earliest indications of the wild and beautiful scenery of Wyoming through which they were about to pa.s.s.

”And after Wyoming comes Utah,” observed Mary Price, thinking aloud.

”And in Utah comes Evelyn,” called Billie.

The girls thrilled at the thought of Evelyn. What might not have happened to her since she had been compelled to return to Utah.

”Perhaps her father has made her marry a Mormon,” suggested Mary in an awed tone of voice.

”Or shut her in a dungeon,” pursued Nancy, who had a vague idea such things might take place in this strange city.

”It's like the story of the wicked king and the princess,” here put in Elinor, her thoughts running on royal blood as usual.

The girls smiled, but the notion was a disquieting one at any rate and Billie began silently to calculate how long it would take before they could reach Salt Lake City, weather and Comet permitting.

”I wish-I wish--” she began, but the whistle of a locomotive interrupted her.

”It's the express,” exclaimed one of the girls.

”It's going to stop.”

”But there's no station.”

”A man is flagging it, don't you see. It's the track walker, I suppose.

Perhaps something is the matter ahead.”

A very tall man with a lean figure, broad shoulders and a flopping sombrero hat was, in fact, waving a red flag in front of the Western express, which slowed up and presently, almost opposite the motor car, came to a full stop. The Comet also paused and waited to see what was the trouble.

The engine was too far in front to hear the conversation between the engineer, who now thrust his head out of the window, and the individual with the flag. But what happened next was exceedingly strange. The flagman, casting aside his signal, followed the engineer down the track to the first coach, which was the baggage car, and presently emerged on the platform leading to the next coach.

And now the engineer was not alone. Several baggage men and train officials had joined him, and they walked with their arms held up in the air. So absorbed was the motor party with the strange actions of the train people that they failed at the moment to notice what the lean individual was carrying in his hand. Neither could they tell what was taking place in the first pa.s.senger coach, but as the train officials were herded across the platform, still with arms uplifted, they suddenly became aware that the pockets in their coats, trousers and waistcoats were turned wrong side out, and that the man who was driving them in front of him like a herd of cattle held a pistol in his right hand, on the barrel of which the sun shone brilliantly.

”Billie, Billie, go on as fast as you can go, they are train robbers,”

whispered Miss Campbell hoa.r.s.ely, almost bereft of her voice from fright.

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