It was a young, a very young railroad, that last bit. The train crawled like a caterpillar—and that’s a good description, for the cars went bumping up slowly over the bulges in the track. Every now and then we got a side-slat which made me think we were going into the creek.
I was too busy worrying about that train to give much thought to what was going to happen to me when I landed in “Royal City” along with Mr. Dragg. Such, I was informed, was the name of the new town. They certainly do pick good names to build up to in the West, just as Seth Dorsey, of Carmel, built a house on to the brass doorknob he found in the road.
Judge Kingsley was not affording me much encouragement; he sat and hung on to the arm of his seat and glared unutterable reproach at me.
I was considerably glad to get off that train.
But as to Royal City! The place tickled me about as much as if it were a cemetery and I were riding in the hearse. It wasn’t even as ripe as that railroad.
My first performance was to step into a mud-hole about half-way to my knees, and I wondered how my pearl-gray trousers stood up under that introduction to the town.
I couldn’t see Mr. Dragg or anybody else; there in that bowl among the hills the darkness was something a man could eat! We stumbled over upheavals of muddy earth, stepped into more holes, and made our way across the especially treacherous places along single planks which were half submerged in mire. A few lanterns, tied to short posts, were dim beacons to direct new arrivals from the railroad to the heart of the “city.” Quite a glare of lights marked the center of business activity. The slope of the hillside was dotted with bits of radiance from uncurtained windows. In that darkness only those points of light hinted at the extent of this new town. The dots were widely scattered, showing that Royal City was ambitiously endeavoring to cover as much ground as possible.
After threading the course marked by the lanterns we came to a stretch of pulpy mud which was bordered by a sidewalk of four planks abreast, evidently the main street of the place. There were buildings of considerable size on both sides of the thoroughfare, but these buildings certainly did put Royal City into the mushroom class. There was not a bit of stone or brick nor a clapboard or shingle in evidence. The buildings were constructed of beams, boards, laths, and tarred paper. They gave me the feeling that I could pop them between my hands like I’d pop a blown-up paper bag.
A lantern, hung on the corner of a building containing a store, lighted up a sign, “Empire Avenue.” The sign over the door of the store advertised the place as the “Imperial Emporium.” A fairly huge structure with tarred-paper outer walls was indicated by its sign as being the “Imperial Hotel.”
There was nothing bashful about the names picked in Royal City!