we are both going to Benton I will say 'Au revoir,' sir." She left
me quivering.

"You do live there?" I besought, after; and received a nod of the golden
head as she entered the sacred Ladies' Waiting Room.

Until the train should be made up I might only stroll, restless and
strangely buoyed, with that vision of an entrancing fellow traveler
filling my eyes. Summoned in due time by the clamor "Passengers for the
Pacific Railway! All aboard, going west on the Union Pacific!" here amidst
the platform hurly-burly of men, women, children and bundles I had the
satisfaction to sight the black-clad figure of My Lady of the Blue Eyes;
hastening, like the rest, but not unattended--for a brakeman bore her
valise and the conductor her parasol. The scurrying crowd gallantly parted
before her. It as promptly closed upon her wake; try as I might I was
utterly unable to keep in her course.

Obviously, the train was to be well occupied. Carried on willy-nilly I
mounted the first steps at hand; elbowed on down the aisle until I managed
to squirm aside into a vacant seat. The remaining half was at once
effectually filled by a large, stout, red-faced woman who formed the base
of a pyramid of boxes and parcels.

My neighbor, who blocked all egress, was going to North Platte, three
hundred miles westward, I speedily found out. And she almost as speedily
learned that I was going to Benton.

She stared, round-eyed.

"I reckon you're a gambler, young man," she accused.

"No, madam. Do I look like a gambler?"

"You can't tell by looks, young man," she asserted, still suspicious,
"Maybe you're on spec', then, in some other way."

"I am seeking health in the West, is all, where the climate is high and
dry."

"My Gawd!" she blurted. "High and dry! You're goin' to the right place.
For all I hear tell, Benton is high enough and dry enough. Are your
eye-teeth peeled, young man?"

"My eye-teeth?" I repeated. "I hope so, madam. Are eye-teeth necessary in
Benton?"

"Peeled, and with hair on 'em, young man," she assured. "I guess you're a
pilgrim, ain't you? I see a leetle green in your eye. No, you ain't a
tin-horn. You're some mother's boy, jest gettin' away from the trough. My
sakes! Sick, too, eh? Weak lungs, ain't it? Now you tell me: Why you goin'
to Benton?"

There was an inviting kindness in her query. Plainly she had a good heart,
large in proportion with her other bulk.

"It's the farthest point west that I can reach by rail