The Treasure Trail

by Frank Lillie Pollock

He was awakened by the roar of an express-train going eastward, and it occurred to him that his baggage must be aboard that train, travelling in ease while its owner plodded between the rails. It was after two o’clock; he had rested long enough, and he returned to the track and took up the trail again.

At sunset he reached Hamilton, and his time-table folder indicated that he had travelled twenty-seven miles that day. At this rate he would reach the Mississippi in less than a week, and he felt only an ordinary sense of healthy fatigue and an extraordinary appetite.

He was charged a quarter for supper that evening at a farmhouse, and before dark he had reached the next village. There was a bit of woodland near by where he imagined that he could encamp, and as it had been a warm day he thought a fire would be unnecessary. So in the twilight he scraped together a heap of last year’s leaves, and spread his coat blanket-wise over his shoulders. It reminded him of many camps in the mountains, and he went to sleep almost at once, for he was very tired.

A sensation of extreme cold awoke him. It was dark; the stars were shining above the trees, and, looking at his watch by a match flare, he learned that it was a quarter to twelve. But the cold was unbearable; he lay and shivered miserably for half an hour, and then got up to look for wood for a fire. In the darkness he could find nothing, and, thoroughly awake by this time, he abandoned the camp and went back through the gloom to the railway station, where half a dozen empty box cars stood upon the siding. Clambering into one of these, it appeared comparatively warm; it reminded him of Margaret and of the hail upon Salt Lake,—things which already seemed very far away.

His rest that night was shattered at frequent intervals by the crash of passing freight-trains. They stopped, backed, and shunted within six feet of him with a clatter of metal like a collapsing foundry, a noise of loud talking and swearing, and a swinging flash of lanterns. Drowsily Elliott fancied that his car was likely to be attached to some train and hauled away, perhaps to St. Louis, perhaps to St. Joseph, but in the stupefaction of sleep he did not care where he went; and, in fact, when he awoke he saw the little village still visible through the open side door, looking strange and unfamiliar in the gray dawn. Grass and fences were white with hoarfrost.

At five o’clock that afternoon Elliott was twenty-two miles nearer the Mississippi. He had just passed a small station. His time-table told him that there was another eight miles away, and he decided to reach it and spend the night in one of its empty freight-cars, for he had learned that camping without a fire was not practicable.

He reached the desired point just as it was growing dark. Point is the word, for it was nothing else. There was no depot there, no houses, no siding,—nothing whatever but a name painted on a mocking plank beside the track. It was a crossroads flag-station. Elliott had failed to notice the “f” opposite the name in the time-table.

The sun had set in clouds and a fine cold rain was beginning. The sky looked black as iron. A camp in the rain was out of the question. The next village was five miles away, but he would have to reach it.

It was a dark night, but it never grows entirely dark in the open air, as house-dwellers imagine, and as he went on he could make out looming masses of forest on either hand. The country seemed to be growing marshy; he came to several long trestles, which he crossed in fear of an inopportune train.

Presently the track plunged into a sort of swamp, where the trees came close and black on both sides. The rain pattered in pools of water, and through the wet air darted great fireflies in streaks of bluish light. Their fading trails crossed among the rotting trees, and from the depths of the marsh sounded such a chorus of frog voices as he had never dreamed of, in piccolo, tenor, bass, screeching and thrumming. In the deepest recesses some weird reptile emitted at regular intervals a rattling Mephistophelean laugh. It impressed Elliott with a kind of horror,—the blue witch-fires flashing through the rain, the reptilian voices, and that ghastly laugh from the decaying woods; and he hastened to leave it behind.