of Mecca. I thought of it with
something like a religious awe. How far was Goodale, would you suppose?
Not far, certainly, once we found the railroad.

We made the last steep climb breathlessly, and came out on the level. A
great, monotonous, heartachy prairie lay before us--utterly featureless
in the twilight. Far off across the scabby land a thin black line swept
out of the dusk into the dusk--straight as a crow's flight. It was the
railroad. We made a cross-cut for it, tumbling over gopher holes,
plunging through sagebrush, scrambling over gullies that told the
incredible tale of torrents having been there once. I ate quantities of
alkali dust and went on believing in Goodale and beefsteak. Beefsteak
became one of the principal stations on the Great Northern Railroad, so
far as I was concerned personally. That is what you might call the
geography of a healthy stomach.

With the falling of the sun the climate of the country had changed. It
was no longer blistering. You sat down for a moment and a shiver went up
your spine. At noon I thought about all the lime-kilns I had ever met.
Now I could hear the hickory nuts dropping in the crisp silence down in
the old Missouri woods.

We struck the railroad and went faster. Since my first experience with
railroad ties, I have continued to associate them with hunger. I need
only look an ordinary railroad tie in the face to contract a wonderful
appetite. It works on the principle of a memory system. So, as we put
the ties behind us, I increased my order at that restaurant in the sweet
little pedestrian's village of Goodale. "A couple of eggs on the side,
waiter," I said half audibly to the petite woman in the white apron who
served the tables in the restaurant there. She was very real to me. I
could count the rings on her fingers; and when she smiled, I noted that
her teeth were very white--doubtless they got that way from eating
quantities and quantities of thick juicy beefsteak!

The track took a sudden turn ahead. "Around that bend," I said aloud,
"lies Goodale." We went faster. We rounded the bend, only to see the
dusky, heartachy, barren stretch.

"Railroads," explained I to myself, "have a way of going somewhere; it
is one of their peculiarities." No doubt this track had been laid for
the express purpose of guiding hungry folks to the hospitable little
village. We plunged on for an hour. Meanwhile my orders to the trim
little woman in the white apron increased steadil