CHAPTER XI
WE GET A “SUPER”
What with assorting and stowing the bales of cloth and the other goods in the Jenks two wagons, watering the animals and staking them out anew, tinkering with the equipment and making various essays with the bull whip, I found occupation enough; nevertheless there were moments of interim, or while passing to and fro, when I was vividly aware of the scenes and events transpiring in this Western world around about.
The bugles sounded calls for the routine at Fort Steele—a mere cantonment, yet, of tents and rough board buildings squatting upon the bare brown soil near the river bank, north of us, and less than a month old. The wagon road was a line of white dust from the river clear to Benton, and through the murk plodded the water haulers and emigrants and freighters, animals and men alike befloured and choked. The dust cloud rested over Benton. It fumed in another line westward, kept in suspense by on-traveling stage and wagon—by wheel, hoof and boot, bound for Utah and Idaho. From the town there extended northward a third dust line, marking the stage and freighting 163 road through the Indian country to the mining settlements of the famous South Pass of the old Oregon Trail; yes, and with branches for the gold regions of Montana.
The railroad trains kept thundering by us—long freights, dusty and indomitable, bringing their loads from the Missouri River almost seven hundred miles in the east. And rolling out of Benton the never-ceasing construction trains sped into the desert as if upon urgent errands in response to some sudden demand of More, More, More.
Upon all sides beyond this business and energy the country stretched lone and uninhabited; a great waste of naked, hot, resplendent land blotched with white and red, showing not a green spot except the course of the Platte; with scorched, rusty hills rising above its fantastic surface, and, in the distance, bluish mountain ranges that appeared to float and waver in the sun-drenched air.
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; children played at makeshift games, dogs drowsed underneath the wagons, and outside our circle the mules and oxen grazed as best they might, their only vexation the blood-sucking flies. The flies were kin of Benton.