and at each
stop the wearied passengers grew more impatient and sarcastic, a perfect
stream of fluent profanity being wafted back whenever the door between
the two sections chanced to be left ajar.

Hope was not the only woman on board, yet a glance at the others was
sufficient to decide their status, even had their freedom of manner
and loud talking not made it equally obvious. Fearful lest she might be
mistaken for one of the same class, she remained in silence, her veil
merely lifted enough to enable her to peer out through the grimy window
at the barren view slipping slowly past. This consisted of the bare
prairie, brown and desolate, occasionally intersected by some small
watercourse, the low hills rising and falling like waves to the far
horizon. Few incidents broke the dead monotony; occasionally a herd of
antelope appeared in the distance silhouetted against the sky-line, and
once they fairly crept for an hour through a mass of buffalo, grazing so
close that a fusillade of guns sounded from the front end of the train.
A little farther along she caught a glimpse of a troop of wild horses
dashing recklessly down into a sheltering ravine. Yet principally all
that met her straining eyes was sterile desolation. Here and there a
great ugly water tank reared its hideous shape beside the track, the
engine always pausing for a fresh supply. Beside it was invariably a
pile of coal, a few construction cars, a hut half buried under earth,
loop-holed and barricaded, with several rough men loafing about, heavily
armed and inquisitive. A few of these points had once been terminal, the
surrounding scenery evidencing past glories by piles of tin cans, and
all manner of debris, with occasionally a vacant shack, left deserted
and forlorn.

Wearied and heartsick, Hope turned away from this outside dreariness to
contemplate more closely her neighbors on board, but found them scarcely
more interesting. Several were playing cards, others moodily staring out
of the windows, while a few were laughing and talking with the girls,
their conversation inane and punctuated with profanity. One man was
figuring on a scratch pad, and Hope decided he must be an engineer
employed on the line; others she classed as small merchants,
saloon-keepers, and frontier riff-raff. They would glance curiously
at her as they marched up and down the narrow aisle, but her veil,
and averted face, prevented even the boldest from speaking, Once she
addressed the