Desert Dust By Edwin C. Sabin Author of “How Are You Feeling?” etc. Now it stirred, and erected a little. I felt the unseemliness of sitting and waiting for her to make her toilet, so lustily dag gered to achieve my own by aid of the w'ater tank, tin basin, rol ler towel and small looking glass at the rear, substituting my personal comb and brush for the pair hanging there by cords. The coach was the last in the train. I stepped out upon the platform, for fresh air. We were traversing the real plains of the Great American Desert, I judged. The prairie grasses had shortened to brown stubble interspersed with bare Bandy soil rising here and there ‘into low hills. It was a country without north, south, east, west, save as denoted by the sun, broadly launching his first beams of the day. Behind us the single track of double rails clear to the Missouri. The dull blare of the car wheels was the only token of life, excepting the long-cared rabbits scampering with erratic high jumps, and the prairie dogs sitting bolt upright in the sunshine among their hill oeked burrows. Of any town there was no sign. We had cut loose from company. Then we thundered by a freight train, loaded with still moie ties and iron, standing up on a siding guarded by the idl ing^ trainmen and by an opera tor’s shack. Smoke was welling from the chimney of the shack —and that domestic touch gave mo a sense of homesickness. Yet I would have not have been home, even for breakfast. This wide realm of nowhere fasci nated with the unknown. The train and shack flattened into the landscape. A bevy of antelope flashed white tails at us as they scudded away. Two motionless figures, horeback, whom I took to be wild Indians, surveyed us from a distant sand-hill. Across the river there appeared a fungus of low buildings almost indistinguish able, with a glimmer of canvas topped wagons fringing it. That was the old emigrant road. While I was thus orienting myself in lonesome but not en tirely hopeless fashion the car door opened and closed. I turn ed my head. The Lady of the Blue Eyes had joined me. As fresh as the morning she was. “Oh ! You? I beg your pardon, sir.” She apologized, but I felt the diffidence was more politic than sincere. “You are heartily welcome, madam,” I assured. “There is air enough for us both.” “The car is suffocating,” she said. “However, the worst is over. We shall not have to ■pend another such a night, son are still for Benton?” “By all means.” And I bow ed to her. “We are fellow-tra velers to the end, I believe.” “Yes?” She scanned me. “But I do not like that word: the end. It is not a popular word, in the West. Certainly not at Benton. For instance—” We tore by another freight waiting upon a siding located amidst a wide debris of tin cans, scattered sheet-iron, stark mud and-stone chimneys, and barren spots, resembling the ruins from lire and quake. “There is Julosbhrg.” “A town?” t gasped. “The end.” She smiled. “The only inhabitants are now in the statiop-house and the grave yard ? ’ ’ “And the others? Where are they?” “Farther west. Many of them iu Benton." “Indeed? Or in North Platte!" I bantered. “North Platte!" She laughed merrily. “Dear me, don’t men tion North Platte—not in the same breath with Benton, or even Cheyenne. A town of hayseeds and dollar-a-day clerks whose height of sport is to go fishing in the Platte! A young man like you would die of ennui in North Platte. Julesburg was a good (Own while it lasted. Peo pie lived, there; and moved on because they wished to keep alive. What is life, anyway, but a constant shuffle of the cards? Oh, I should have laugh cd to see you in North Platte." And laugh she did. “You dght as well be dead underground as buried in one of those smug se\ en-Sabbaeth-a-weck places. ’' Her free speech accorded ill with what I bad been accustom « ed to in woman kind; and yet became her sparkling eyes and general dash. “To be dead ig past the jok ing, madam,” I reminded. “Certainly. To be dead is the end. In Benton we live while we live, and don’t mention the end. So I took exception to your gallantry.” She glanced behind her, through the door window into the car. “Will you,” she asked hasti ly, “join me in a little appetizer, as they say? You will find it a superior cognac—and we break fast shortly, at Sidney.” From the pocket of her shirt she had extracted a small silver flask, stoppered with a tiny screw cup. Her face swam be fore me in my astonishment. “I rarely drink liquor, ma dam,” I stammered. “Nor I. But when traveling —you know. And in high and —dry Benton liquor is quite a necessity. You will discover that, 1 am sure. You will not decline to taste with a lady? Let us drink to better acquaint, ance, in Benton.” “With all my heart, madam,” I blurted. She poured, while swaying to the motion of the train; passed the cup to me with a brightly challanging smile. “Ladies first. That is the custom, is it not?” I queried. “But I am hostess, sir. I do the honors. Pray do you your duty.” “To our better acquaintance, then, madam,” I accepted. “In Benton.” The cognac swept down my throat like a stab of hot oil. She poured for herself. “A votre sante, monsieur— and continued beginnings, no ends.” She daintily tossed it off. We had consummated our pledges just in time. The b.ake man issued, stumping noisily and bringing discord into my heaven of blue and gold and comfortable warmth. “Howdy, lady and gent? Breakfast is twenty minutes.” He grinned affably at her; yes, with a trace of familiarity. “Sleep well, madam?” “Passably, thank you.” Her voice held a certain element of calm interrogation as if to ask how far he intended to push ac quaintance. “We’re nearing Sidney, you say? Then I bid you gentlemen goodraorning.” With a darting glance at him and a parting smile for mo she passed inside. The brakeman leaned for an instant’s look ahead, up the track, and linger ed. “Friend of yours, is she?” “I met her in Omaha, is ail.” I stiffly informed. “Considerable of a dame, eh?” He eyed me. “You’re booked for Benton, too?” “Yes, sir.” “Never been there, myself. She’s another hellroarer, they say.” “Sir!” I remonstrated. “Oh, the town, the town,” he enlightened. “I’m not say ing nothing against it, for that matter—nor against her, either. They’re both O. K.” “You are acquainted with the lady, yourself?” uer* sure. l know about everybody along the line be-1 tween Platte and Cheyene. Been running on this division ever since it opened.” “She lives in Benton, though, I understand,” I proffered. “Why, yes; sure she does. Moved there from Cheyenne.” lie looked at me queerly. “Na turally. Ain’t that so?” “Probably it is,” I admitted. “I see no reason to doubt your word;” “Yep. Followed her man. A heap of people moved from Cheyenne to Benton, by way of Laramie.” “She is married, then?” “Far as I know. Anyway, she's not single, by a long shot.” And he laughed. “But, Lord, that cuts no great figger. People here don’t stand on cere mony in those matters. Every thing’s aboveboard. Hands on the table until time to draw— then draw quick.” His language was a little t