Mallory sat in the smoking room, and threw aside a half-finished cigar. Life was indeed nauseous when tobacco turned rank on his lips. He watched without interest the stupendous scenery whirling past the train; granite ravines, infernal grotesques of architecture and diablerie, the Giant's Teapot, the Devil's Slide, the Pulpit Rock, the Hanging Rock, splashes of mineral color, as if titanic paint pots had been spilled or flung against the cliffs, sudden hushes of green pine-worlds, dreary graveyards of sand and sagebrush, mountain streams in frothing panics.
His jaded soul could not respond to any of these thrillers, the dime-novels and melodramatic third-acts of Nature. But with the arrival of a train-boy, who had got on at Evanston with a batch of Salt Lake City newspapers, he woke a little.
The other men came trooping round, like sheep at a herd-boy's whistle or chickens when a pan of grain is brought into the yard. The train "butcher" had a nasal sing-song, but his strain might have been the Pied Piper's tune emptying Hamelin of its grown-ups. The charms of flirtation, matrimonial bliss and feminine beauty were forgotten, and the males flocked to the delights of stock-market reports, political or racing or dramatic or sporting or criminal news. Even Ashton braved the eyes of his fellow men for the luxury of burying his nose in a fresh paper.
"Papers, gents? Yes? No?" the train butcher chanted. "Salt Lake papers, Ogden papers, all the latest papers, comic papers, magazines, periodicals."
"Here, boy," said Ashton, snapping his fingers, "what's the latest New York paper?"
"Last Sat'day's."
"Six days old? I read that before I left New York. Well, give me that Salt Lake paper. It has yesterday's stock market, I suppose."
"Yes, sir." He passed over the sheet and made change, without abating his monody: "Papers, gents. Yes? No? Salt Lake pa——"
"Whash latesh from Chicago?" said Wellington.
"Monday's."