Miss Dividends: A Novel

by Archibald Clavering Gunter

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 passengers 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 mediæval 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 Cañon 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!"