Project Gutenberg's Despair's Last Journey, by David Christie Murray

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Title: Despair's Last Journey

Author: David Christie Murray

Release Date: August 8, 2007 [EBook #22276]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DESPAIR'S LAST JOURNEY ***

Produced by David Widger

DESPAIR'S LAST JOURNEY

By David Christie Murray

1901

INTRODUCTION--HOW AND WHERE THE STORY OF DESPAIR'S LAST JOURNEY WAS TOLD

I

A solitary passenger alighted from the train, and many people looked
curiously after him. The mulatto porter handed to the platform a
well-battered portmanteau, which was plastered thickly over with
luggage-labels and the advertising tickets of hotels in every quarter of
the globe. A great canvas bag followed, ornamented in like fashion. Then
from the baggage-van an invisible person tumbled, a canvas bale.
The coffee-coloured mulatto held out a grayish-white palm for the
quarter-dollar the passenger was ready to drop into it, and stepped
back to the platform of the car. The engine bell tolled slowly, as if it
sounded a knell, and the train wound away. The curve of the line carried
it out of sight in less than a minute, but in the clear mountain air the
quickened ringing of the bell, the pant of the engine, and the roll of
the wheels were audible for a long time. Then the engine, with a final
wail of good-bye, plunged into the tunnel of a distant snow-shed, and
the whole region seemed as quiet as a grave.

The little weatherboard railside station was void of life, and there
was not a soul in sight. The passenger had given up the ticket for his
sleeping-berth an hour before, and had announced his intention to stop
over at this lonely place. An altercation with the conductor as to the
possibility of releasing the canvas bale from the baggage-van before it
arrived at its expressed destination at Vancouver had reached the ears
of other travellers who were on duty in the observation car, painfully
conscious of the scenery and the obligations it imposed. To experience
some ecstasy, more or less, was imperative, and it was weary work for
most of them. They stuck to it manfully and wo