"Harry, when the train stops, I want you should get off and see where Brockway goes. You know him, and you might make an excuse to talk with him. When you have found out, come and tell me. Do you understand?"
"Yes, sir," said Quatremain; and when he had kicked his pride into a proper attitude of submission, he went about the errand.
XVI
THE MADDING CROWD
Twice a day, in the time whereof these things are written, the platform of the Denver Union Depot gave the incoming migrant his first true glimpse of the untrammelled West. A broad sea of planking, open to the heavens—and likewise to the world at large—was the morning and evening arena of a moving spectacle the like of which is not to be witnessed in any well-ordered railway station of the self-contained East.
Trains headed north, east, south, and west, backed across the platform and drawn apart in the midst to leave a passageway for the crowds; other trains going and coming, with shouting yard-men for outriders to clear the tracks; huge shifting pyramids of baggage piled high on tilting trucks, dividing with the moving trains the attention of the dodging multitude; the hurrying throngs imbued for the moment with the strenuous travail-spirit of the New West; these were the persons and the properties. And the shrieking safety-valves, the clanging bells, the tinnient gong of the breakfast-room, the rumbling trucks, and the under-roar of matter in motion, were the pieces in the orchestra.
It is all very different now, I am told. They have iron railings with wicket-gates and sentinels in uniform who ask to see your ticket, and a squad of policemen to keep order, and rain-sheds over the platforms (it used not to rain in the Denver I knew), and all the other appurtenances and belongings of a well-conducted railway terminus. But the elder order of disorder obtained on the autumn morning when the "Flying Kestrel" came to rest opposite the gap in the bisected trains filling the other tracks. Brockway was the first man out of the Tadmor, but the gadfly was a close second.
"No, sir; I don't intend to lose sight of you, Mr. ah—Brockway," he quavered; and he hung at the passenger agent's elbow while the latter was marshalling the party for the descent on the breakfast-room, a process which vocalized itself thus:
Brockway, handing the ladies in the debarking procession down the steps of the car: "Breakfast is ready in the dining-room. Special tables reserved for this party. Wait, and we'll all go in together. Leave your hand-baggage with the porter, unless it's something you will need during the day. Take your time; you have thirty minutes before the train leaves for Clear Creek Canyon and the Loop."