FIFTEEN
August 2nd. Laramie, Wyoming.
A faint sunset glow illumined the dry, brown plain as we approached the grade west of Cheyenne. A pungent odour rose from under foot as we trailed through the low brush, and as we approached the track, the rails set up a low humming that steadily increased in pitch and volume. A glaring eye appeared in the distance. I had never attempted to board a train in rapid motion and was more or less ignorant of ladders, hand holds and other details of car construction, and the idea of leaping on the roaring mass that came thundering through the semidarkness appalled me. Nearer and nearer drew the engine. The fierce glow of the furnace, as the fireman laboured to fill the insatiable maw, gleamed red upon the gravelled track. Black smoke rolled from the stack and hung low in the quiet air. With laboured pants, like an exhausted leviathan, the great machine lurched past.
Dan caught my hand and we ran beside the track. Car after car clanked by. The hammering wheels seemed hungry for a victim. My eyes visioned the ghastly death of an unknown man, whose life had been ground out but a scant half hour before we had discovered the mangled remains. I saw myself, hampered with clinging skirts and weighted with a heavy bundle, clinging, slipping, falling between the ravening wheels, and a deadly nausea seized me. With a half stifled cry I turned down the embankment. Dan pulled and exhorted in vain.
“It’s no use,” I said doggedly. “I just can’t do it.”
The tail-lights of the caboose faded from view.
“Well, I’ll be darned,” said Dan. “I never knew you were a coward.”
“I don’t care if I am. It’s better than being chopped to pieces under that train. I feel sure I should have gone under if I had made the attempt.”
“Nonsense,” he replied. “Now we’re in a nice fix. We can’t stay here. We can’t walk across that wilderness. And we can’t catch a freight in the railroad yard on account of Jeff Farr. First time I ever saw you show the white feather.”
“Just you wait till morning and we’ll see who’ll show the white feather. I’m going to walk right into that yard, and Jeff Farr or no Jeff Farr, I’ll board the first west-bound freight that pulls out.”