"Well," he summed up, "what is your opinion of the universe up to date? Got any faith in anything left?"
THE MAID'S PROGRESS
From the great plateau of the Snake River, at a point that is far from any main station, the stage-road sinks into a hollow which the winds might have scooped, so constantly do they pounce and delve and circle round the spot. Down in this pothole, where sand has drifted into the infrequent wheel tracks, there is a dead stillness while the perpetual land gale is roaring and troubling above.
One noon at the latter end of summer a wagon carrying four persons, with camp gear and provision for a self-subsisting trip, jolted down into this hollow, the horses sweating at a walk as they beat through the heavy sand. The teamster drew them up and looked hard at the singular, lonely place.
"I don't see any signs of that old corral, do you?" objected the man beside him. He spoke low, as if to keep his doubts from their neighbors on the back seat. These, an old, delicate, reverend looking gentleman, and a veiled woman sitting very erect, were silent, awaiting some decision of their fellow travelers.
"There wouldn't be much of anything left of it," the teamster urged on the point in question; "only a few rails and wattles, maybe. Campers would have made a clean-up of them."
"You think this is the place, do you not, Mr. Thane? This is Pilgrim Station?" The old gentleman spoke to the younger of the two men in front, who, turning, showed the three-quarter view of a tanned, immobile face and the keen side glance of a pair of dense black eyes,—eyes that saw everything and told nothing.
"One of our landmarks seems to be missing. I was just asking Kinney about it," he said.
Mr. Kinney was not, it appeared, as familiar as a guide should be with the road, which had fallen from use before he came to that part of the country; but his knowledge of roads in general inclined him to take with allowance the testimony of any one man of merely local information.
"That fool Mormon at the ferry hain't been past here, he said himself, since the stage was pulled off. What was here then wouldn't be here now—not if it could be eat up or burnt up."