XVI
The pleasantest experience Thea had that summer was
a trip that she and her mother made to Denver in
Ray Kennedy's caboose. Mrs. Kronborg had been look-
ing forward to this excursion for a long while, but as Ray
never knew at what hour his freight would leave Moon-
stone, it was difficult to arrange. The call-boy was as likely
to summon him to start on his run at twelve o'clock mid-
night as at twelve o'clock noon. The first week in June
started out with all the scheduled trains running on time,
and a light freight business. Tuesday evening Ray, after
consulting with the dispatcher, stopped at the Kronborgs'
front gate to tell Mrs. Kronborg--who was helping Tillie
water the flowers--that if she and Thea could be at the
depot at eight o'clock the next morning, he thought he
could promise them a pleasant ride and get them into
Denver before nine o'clock in the evening. Mrs. Kronborg
told him cheerfully, across the fence, that she would "take
him up on it," and Ray hurried back to the yards to scrub
out his car.
The one complaint Ray's brakemen had to make of him
was that he was too fussy about his caboose. His former
brakeman had asked to be transferred because, he said,
"Kennedy was as fussy about his car as an old maid about
her bird-cage." Joe Giddy, who was braking with Ray
now, called him "the bride," because he kept the caboose
and bunks so clean.
It was properly the brakeman's business to keep the car
clean, but when Ray got back to the depot, Giddy was
nowhere to be found. Muttering that all his brakemen
seemed to consider him "easy," Ray went down to his car
alone. He built a fire in the stove and put water on to heat
while he got into his overalls and jumper. Then he set to
work with a scrubbing-brush and plenty of soap and
"cleaner." He scrubbed the floor and seats, blacked the
stove, put clean sheets on the bunks, and then began to
demolish Giddy's picture gallery. Ray found that his
brakemen were likely to have what he termed "a taste for
the nude in art," and Giddy was no exception. Ray took
down half a dozen girls in tights and ballet skirts,--pre-
miums for cigarette coupons,--and some racy calendars
advertising saloons and sporting clubs, which had cost
Giddy both time and trouble; he even removed Giddy's
particular pet, a naked girl lying on a couch with her knee
carelessly poised in the air. Underneath the picture was
printed the title, "The Odalisque." Giddy was under the
happy delusion that this title meant something wicked,--
there was a wicked look about the consonants,--but Ray,
of course, had looked it up, and Giddy was indebted to the
dictionary for the privilege of keeping his lady. If "oda-
lisque" had been what Ray called an objectionable word,
he would have thrown the picture out in the first place.
Ray even took down a picture of Mrs. Langtry in evening
dress, because it was entitled the "Jersey Lily," and be-
cause there was a small head of Edward VII, then Prince
of Wales, in one corner. Albert Edward's conduct was a
popular subject of discussion among railroad men in those
days, and as Ray pulled the tacks out of this lithograph he
felt more indignant with the English than ever. He de-
posited all these pictures under the mattress of Giddy's
bunk, and stood admiring his clean car in the lamplight;
the walls now exhibited only a wheatfield, advertising agri-
cultural implements, a map of Colorado, and some pictures
of race-horses and hunting-dogs. At this moment Giddy,
freshly shaved and shampooed, his shirt shining with the
highest polish known to Chinese laundrymen, his straw
hat tipped over his right eye, thrust his head in at the door.
"What in hell--" he brought out furiously. His good-
humored, sunburned face seemed fairly to swell with
amazement and anger.
"That's all right, Giddy," Ray called in a conciliatory
tone. "Nothing injured. I'll put 'em all up again as I
found 'em. Going to take some ladies down in the car
to-morrow."
Giddy scowled. He did not dispute the propriety of Ray's
measures, if there were to be ladies on board, but he felt
injured. "I suppose you'll expect me to behave like a
Y.M.C.A. secretary," he growled. "I can't do my work
and serve tea at the same time."
"No need to have a tea-party," said Ray with deter-
mined cheerfulness. "Mrs. Kronborg will bring the lunch,
and it will be a darned good one."
Giddy lounged against the car, holding his cigar between
two thick fingers. "Then I guess she'll get it," he observed
knowingly. "I don't think your musical friend is much on
the grub-box. Has to keep her hands white to tickle the
ivories." Giddy had nothing against Thea, but he felt
cantankerous and wanted to get a rise out of Kennedy.
"Every man to his own job," Ray replied agreeably,
pulling his white shirt on over his head.
Giddy emitted smoke disdainfully. "I suppose so. The
man that gets her will have to wear an apron and bake the
pancakes. Well, some men like to mess about the kitchen."
He paused, but Ray was intent on getting into his clothes
as quickly as possible. Giddy thought he could go a little
further. "Of course, I don't dispute your right to haul
women in this car if you want to; but personally, so far as
I'm concerned, I'd a good deal rather drink a can of toma-
toes and do without the women AND their lunch. I was never
much enslaved to hard-boiled eggs, anyhow."
"You'll eat 'em to-morrow, all the same." Ray's tone
had a steely glitter as he jumped out of the car, and Giddy
stood aside to let him pass. He knew that Kennedy's next
reply would be delivered by hand. He had once seen Ray
beat up a nasty fellow for insulting a Mexican woman who
helped about the grub-car in the work train, and his fists
had worked like two steel hammers. Giddy wasn't looking
for trouble.
At eight o'clock the next morning Ray greeted his ladies
and helped them into the car. Giddy had put on a clean
shirt and yellow pig-skin gloves and was whistling his
best. He considered Kennedy a fluke as a ladies' man,
and if there was to be a party, the honors had to be done
by some one who wasn't a blacksmith at small-talk.
Giddy had, as Ray sarcastically admitted, "a local repu-
tation as a jollier," and he was fluent in gallant speeches
of a not too-veiled nature. He insisted that Thea should
take his seat in the cupola, opposite Ray's, where she
could look out over the country. Thea told him, as she
clambered up, that she cared a good deal more about
riding in that seat than about going to Denver. Ray was
never so companionable and easy as when he sat chatting
in the lookout of his little house on wheels. Good stories
came to him, and interesting recollections. Thea had a
great respect for the reports he had to write out, and for
the telegrams that were handed to him at stations; for
all the knowledge and experience it must take to run a
freight train.
Giddy, down in the car, in the pauses of his work, made
himself agreeable to Mrs. Kronborg.
"It's a great rest to be where my family can't get at me,
Mr. Giddy," she told him. "I thought you and Ray might
have some housework here for me to look after, but I
couldn't improve any on this car."
"Oh, we like to keep her neat," returned Giddy glibly,
winking up at Ray's expressive back. "If you want to see
a clean ice-box, look at this one. Yes, Kennedy always
carries fresh cream to eat on his oatmeal. I'm not particu-
lar. The tin cow's good enough for me."
"Most of you boys smoke so much that all victuals taste
alike to you," said Mrs. Kronborg. "I've got no religious
scruples against smoking, but I couldn't take as much
interest cooking for a man that used tobacco. I guess it's
all right for bachelors who have to eat round."
Mrs. Kronborg took off her hat and veil and made her-
self comfortable. She seldom had an opportunity to be
idle, and she enjoyed it. She could sit for hours and watch
the sage-hens fly up and the jack-rabbits dart away from
the track, without being bored. She wore a tan bombazine
dress, made very plainly, and carried a roomy, worn,
mother-of-the-family handbag.
Ray Kennedy always insisted that Mrs. Kronborg was
"a fine-looking lady," but this was not the common opin-
ion in Moonstone. Ray had lived long enough among the
Mexicans to dislike fussiness, to feel that there was some-
thing more attractive in ease of manner than in absent-
minded concern about hairpins and dabs of lace. He had
learned to think that the way a woman stood, moved, sat
in her chair, looked at you, was more important than the
absence of wrinkles from her skirt. Ray had, indeed, such
unusual perceptions in some directions, that one could
not help wondering what he would have been if he had
ever, as he said, had "half a chance."
He was right; Mrs. Kronborg was a fine-looking woman.
She was short and square, but her head was a real head,
not a mere jerky termination of the body. It had some
individuality apart from hats and hairpins. Her hair,
Moonstone women admitted, would have been very pretty
"on anybody else." Frizzy bangs were worn then, but
Mrs. Kronborg always dressed her hair in the same way,
parted in the middle, brushed smoothly back from her
low, white forehead, pinned loosely on the back of her
head in two thick braids. It was growing gray about the
temples, but after the manner of yellow hair it seemed
only to have grown paler there, and had taken on a color
like that of English primroses. Her eyes were clear and
untroubled; her face smooth and calm, and, as Ray said,
"strong."
Thea and Ray, up in the sunny cupola, were laughing
and talking. Ray got great pleasure out of seeing her face
there in the little box where he so often imagined it. They
were crossing a plateau where great red sandstone boulders
lay about, most of them much wider at the top than at the
base, so that they looked like great toadstools.
"The sand has been blowing against them for a good
many hundred years," Ray explained, directing Thea's
eyes with his gloved hand. "You see the sand blows low,
being so heavy, and cuts them out underneath. Wind and
sand are pretty high-class architects. That's the principle
of most of the Cliff-Dweller remains down at Canyon de
Chelly. The sandstorms had dug out big depressions in the
face of a cliff, and the Indians built their houses back in
that depression."
"You told me that before, Ray, and of course you know.
But the geography says their houses were cut out of the
face of the living rock, and I like that better."
Ray sniffed. "What nonsense does get printed! It's
enough to give a man disrespect for learning. How could
them Indians cut houses out of the living rock, when they
knew nothing about the art of forging metals?" Ray
leaned back in his chair, swung his foot, and looked thought-
ful and happy. He was in one of his favorite fields of specu-
lation, and nothing gave him more pleasure than talking
these things over with Thea Kronborg. "I'll tell you,
Thee, if those old fellows had learned to work metals once,
your ancient Egyptians and Assyrians wouldn't have beat
them very much. Whatever they did do, they did well.
Their masonry's standing there to-day, the corners as true
as the Denver Capitol. They were clever at most every-
thing but metals; and that one failure kept them from
getting across. It was the quicksand that swallowed 'em
up, as a race. I guess civilization proper began when men
mastered metals."
Ray was not vain about his bookish phrases. He did not
use them to show off, but because they seemed to him more
adequate than colloquial speech. He felt strongly about
these things, and groped for words, as he said, "to express
himself." He had the lamentable American belief that
"expression" is obligatory. He still carried in his trunk,
among the unrelated possessions of a railroad man, a note-
book on the title-page of which was written "Impressions
on First Viewing the Grand Canyon, Ray H. Kennedy."
The pages of that book were like a battlefield; the laboring
author had fallen back from metaphor after metaphor,
abandoned position after position. He would have admit-
ted that the art of forging metals was nothing to this treach-
erous business of recording impressions, in which the
material you were so full of vanished mysteriously under
your striving hand. "Escaping steam!" he had said to him-
self, the last time he tried to read that notebook.
Thea didn't mind Ray's travel-lecture expressions. She
dodged them, unconsciously, as she did her father's pro-
fessional palaver. The light in Ray's pale-blue eyes and
the feeling in his voice more than made up for the stiff-
ness of his language.
"Were the Cliff-Dwellers really clever with their hands,
Ray, or do you always have to make allowance and say,
'That was pretty good for an Indian'?" she asked.
Ray went down into the car to give some instructions to
Giddy. "Well," he said when he returned, "about the
aborigines: once or twice I've been with some fellows who
were cracking burial mounds. Always felt a little ashamed
of it, but we did pull out some remarkable things. We got
some pottery out whole; seemed pretty fine to me. I guess
their women were their artists. We found lots of old shoes
and sandals made out of yucca fiber, neat and strong; and
feather blankets, too."
"Feather blankets? You never told me about them."
"Didn't I? The old fellows--or the squaws--wove
a close netting of yucca fiber, and then tied on little bunches
of down feathers, overlapping, just the way feathers grow
on a bird. Some of them were feathered on both sides.
You can't get anything warmer than that, now, can you?
--or prettier. What I like about those old aborigines is,
that they got all their ideas from nature."
Thea laughed. "That means you're going to say some-
thing about girls' wearing corsets. But some of your In-
dians flattened their babies' heads, and that's worse than
wearing corsets."
"Give me an Indian girl's figure for beauty," Ray in-
sisted. "And a girl with a voice like yours ought to have
plenty of lung-action. But you know my sentiments on
that subject. I was going to tell you about the handsomest
thing we ever looted out of those burial mounds. It was on
a woman, too, I regret to say. She was preserved as perfect
as any mummy that ever came out of the pyramids. She
had a big string of turquoises around her neck, and she was
wrapped in a fox-fur cloak, lined with little yellow feathers
that must have come off wild canaries. Can you beat that,
now? The fellow that claimed it sold it to a Boston man
for a hundred and fifty dollars."
Thea looked at him admiringly. "Oh, Ray, and didn't
you get anything off her, to remember her by, even? She
must have been a princess."
Ray took a wallet from the pocket of the coat that was
hanging beside him, and drew from it a little lump wrapped
in worn tissue paper. In a moment a stone, soft and blue
as a robin's egg, lay in the hard palm of his hand. It was a
turquoise, rubbed smooth in the Indian finish, which is so
much more beautiful than the incongruous high polish the
white man gives that tender stone. "I got this from her
necklace. See the hole where the string went through?
You know how the Indians drill them? Work the drill with
their teeth. You like it, don't you? They're just right for
you. Blue and yellow are the Swedish colors." Ray looked
intently at her head, bent over his hand, and then gave his
whole attention to the track.
"I'll tell you, Thee," he began after a pause, "I'm going
to form a camping party one of these days and persuade
your PADRE to take you and your mother down to that coun-
try, and we'll live in the rock houses--they're as comfort-
able as can be--and start the cook fires up in 'em once
again. I'll go into the burial mounds and get you more
keepsakes than any girl ever had before." Ray had planned
such an expedition for his wedding journey, and it made
his heart thump to see how Thea's eyes kindled when he
talked about it. "I've learned more down there about
what makes history," he went on, "than in all the books
I've ever read. When you sit in the sun and let your heels
hang out of a doorway that drops a thousand feet, ideas
come to you. You begin to feel what the human race has
been up against from the beginning. There's something
mighty elevating about those old habitations. You feel like
it's up to you to do your best, on account of those fellows
having it so hard. You feel like you owed them something."
At Wassiwappa, Ray got instructions to sidetrack until
Thirty-six went by. After reading the message, he turned
to his guests. "I'm afraid this will hold us up about two
hours, Mrs. Kronborg, and we won't get into Denver till
near midnight."
"That won't trouble me," said Mrs. Kronborg content-
edly. "They know me at the Y.W.C.A., and they'll let
me in any time of night. I came to see the country, not to
make time. I've always wanted to get out at this white
place and look around, and now I'll have a chance. What
makes it so white?"
"Some kind of chalky rock." Ray sprang to the ground
and gave Mrs. Kronborg his hand. "You can get soil of
any color in Colorado; match most any ribbon."
While Ray was getting his train on to a side track, Mrs.
Kronborg strolled off to examine the post-office and sta-
tion house; these, with the water tank, made up the town.
The station agent "batched" and raised chickens. He ran
out to meet Mrs. Kronborg, clutched at her feverishly,
and began telling her at once how lonely he was and what
bad luck he was having with his poultry. She went to his
chicken yard with him, and prescribed for gapes.
Wassiwappa seemed a dreary place enough to people who
looked for verdure, a brilliant place to people who liked
color. Beside the station house there was a blue-grass plot,
protected by a red plank fence, and six fly-bitten box-elder
trees, not much larger than bushes, were kept alive by
frequent hosings from the water plug. Over the windows
some dusty morning-glory vines were trained on strings.
All the country about was broken up into low chalky hills,
which were so intensely white, and spotted so evenly with
sage, that they looked like white leopards crouching. White
dust powdered everything, and the light was so intense
that the station agent usually wore blue glasses. Behind
the station there was a water course, which roared in flood
time, and a basin in the soft white rock where a pool of
alkali water flashed in the sun like a mirror. The agent
looked almost as sick as his chickens, and Mrs. Kronborg
at once invited him to lunch with her party. He had, he
confessed, a distaste for his own cooking, and lived mainly
on soda crackers and canned beef. He laughed apologetic-
ally when Mrs. Kronborg said she guessed she'd look about
for a shady place to eat lunch.
She walked up the track to the water tank, and there, in
the narrow shadows cast by the uprights on which the
tank stood, she found two tramps. They sat up and
stared at her, heavy with sleep. When she asked them
where they were going, they told her "to the coast." They
rested by day and traveled by night; walked the ties unless
they could steal a ride, they said; adding that "these
Western roads were getting strict." Their faces were
blistered, their eyes blood-shot, and their shoes looked fit
only for the trash pile.
"I suppose you're hungry?" Mrs. Kronborg asked. "I
suppose you both drink?" she went on thoughtfully, not
censoriously.
The huskier of the two hoboes, a bushy, bearded fellow,
rolled his eyes and said, "I wonder?" But the other, who
was old and spare, with a sharp nose and watery eyes,
sighed. "Some has one affliction, some another," he said.
Mrs. Kronborg reflected. "Well," she said at last, "you
can't get liquor here, anyway. I am going to ask you to
vacate, because I want to have a little picnic under this
tank for the freight crew that brought me along. I wish I
had lunch enough to provide you, but I ain't. The station
agent says he gets his provisions over there at the post-
office store, and if you are hungry you can get some canned
stuff there." She opened her handbag and gave each of
the tramps a half-dollar.
The old man wiped his eyes with his forefinger. "Thank
'ee, ma'am. A can of tomatters will taste pretty good to me.
I wasn't always walkin' ties; I had a good job in Cleve-
land before--"
The hairy tramp turned on him fiercely. "Aw, shut up
on that, grandpaw! Ain't you got no gratitude? What do
you want to hand the lady that fur?"
The old man hung his head and turned away. As he
went off, his comrade looked after him and said to Mrs.
Kronborg: "It's true, what he says. He had a job in the
car shops; but he had bad luck." They both limped away
toward the store, and Mrs. Kronborg sighed. She was not
afraid of tramps. She always talked to them, and never
turned one away. She hated to think how many of them
there were, crawling along the tracks over that vast coun-
try.
Her reflections were cut short by Ray and Giddy and
Thea, who came bringing the lunch box and water bottles.
Although there was not shadow enough to accommodate
all the party at once, the air under the tank was distinctly
cooler than the surrounding air, and the drip made a pleas-
ant sound in that breathless noon. The station agent ate
as if he had never been fed before, apologizing every time
he took another piece of fried chicken. Giddy was una-
bashed before the devilled eggs of which he had spoken so
scornfully last night. After lunch the men lit their pipes
and lay back against the uprights that supported the tank.
"This is the sunny side of railroading, all right," Giddy
drawled luxuriously.
"You fellows grumble too much," said Mrs. Kronborg
as she corked the pickle jar. "Your job has its drawbacks,
but it don't tie you down. Of course there's the risk; but
I believe a man's watched over, and he can't be hurt on
the railroad or anywhere else if it's intended he shouldn't
be."
Giddy laughed. "Then the trains must be operated by
fellows the Lord has it in for, Mrs. Kronborg. They figure
it out that a railroad man's only due to last eleven years;
then it's his turn to be smashed."
"That's a dark Providence, I don't deny," Mrs. Kron-
borg admitted. "But there's lots of things in life that's
hard to understand."
"I guess!" murmured Giddy, looking off at the spotted
white hills.
Ray smoked in silence, watching Thea and her mother
clear away the lunch. He was thinking that Mrs. Kron-
borg had in her face the same serious look that Thea had;
only hers was calm and satisfied, and Thea's was intense
and questioning. But in both it was a large kind of look,
that was not all the time being broken up and convulsed
by trivial things. They both carried their heads like Indian
women, with a kind of noble unconsciousness. He got so
tired of women who were always nodding and jerking;
apologizing, deprecating, coaxing, insinuating with their
heads.
When Ray's party set off again that afternoon the sun
beat fiercely into the cupola, and Thea curled up in one of
the seats at the back of the car and had a nap.
As the short twilight came on, Giddy took a turn in the
cupola, and Ray came down and sat with Thea on the rear
platform of the caboose and watched the darkness come
in soft waves over the plain. They were now about thirty
miles from Denver, and the mountains looked very near.
The great toothed wall behind which the sun had gone
down now separated into four distinct ranges, one behind
the other. They were a very pale blue, a color scarcely
stronger than wood smoke, and the sunset had left bright
streaks in the snow-filled gorges. In the clear, yellow-
streaked sky the stars were coming out, flickering like
newly lighted lamps, growing steadier and more golden as
the sky darkened and the land beneath them fell into com-
plete shadow. It was a cool, restful darkness that was
not black or forbidding, but somehow open and free; the
night of high plains where there is no moistness or misti-
ness in the atmosphere.
Ray lit his pipe. "I never get tired of them old stars,
Thee. I miss 'em up in Washington and Oregon where it's
misty. Like 'em best down in Mother Mexico, where they
have everything their own way. I'm not for any country
where the stars are dim." Ray paused and drew on his
pipe. "I don't know as I ever really noticed 'em much till
that first year I herded sheep up in Wyoming. That was
the year the blizzard caught me."
"And you lost all your sheep, didn't you, Ray?" Thea
spoke sympathetically. "Was the man who owned them
nice about it?"
"Yes, he was a good loser. But I didn't get over it for
a long while. Sheep are so damned resigned. Sometimes,
to this day, when I'm dog-tired, I try to save them sheep
all night long. It comes kind of hard on a boy when he first
finds out how little he is, and how big everything else is."
Thea moved restlessly toward him and dropped her chin
on her hand, looking at a low star that seemed to rest just
on the rim of the earth. "I don't see how you stood it. I
don't believe I could. I don't see how people can stand it
to get knocked out, anyhow!" She spoke with such fierce-
ness that Ray glanced at her in surprise. She was sitting
on the floor of the car, crouching like a little animal about
to spring.
"No occasion for you to see," he said warmly. "There'll
always be plenty of other people to take the knocks for
you."
"That's nonsense, Ray." Thea spoke impatiently and
leaned lower still, frowning at the red star. "Everybody's
up against it for himself, succeeds or fails--himself."
"In one way, yes," Ray admitted, knocking the sparks
from his pipe out into the soft darkness that seemed to
flow like a river beside the car. "But when you look at
it another way, there are a lot of halfway people in this
world who help the winners win, and the failers fail. If a
man stumbles, there's plenty of people to push him down.
But if he's like `the youth who bore,' those same people
are foreordained to help him along. They may hate to,
worse than blazes, and they may do a lot of cussin' about
it, but they have to help the winners and they can't dodge
it. It's a natural law, like what keeps the big clock up
there going, little wheels and big, and no mix-up." Ray's
hand and his pipe were suddenly outlined against the sky.
"Ever occur to you, Thee, that they have to be on time
close enough to MAKE TIME? The Dispatcher up there must
have a long head." Pleased with his similitude, Ray went
back to the lookout. Going into Denver, he had to keep a
sharp watch.
Giddy came down, cheerful at the prospect of getting
into port, and singing a new topical ditty that had come up
from the Santa Fe by way of La Junta. Nobody knows
who makes these songs; they seem to follow events auto-
matically. Mrs. Kronborg made Giddy sing the whole
twelve verses of this one, and laughed until she wiped her
eyes. The story was that of Katie Casey, head dining-
room girl at Winslow, Arizona, who was unjustly dis-
charged by the Harvey House manager. Her suitor, the
yardmaster, took the switchmen out on a strike until she
was reinstated. Freight trains from the east and the west
piled up at Winslow until the yards looked like a log-jam.
The division superintendent, who was in California, had to
wire instructions for Katie Casey's restoration before he
could get his trains running. Giddy's song told all this with
much detail, both tender and technical, and after each of
the dozen verses came the refrain:--
"Oh, who would think that Katie Casey owned the Santa Fe?
But it really looks that way,
The dispatcher's turnin' gray,
All the crews is off their pay;
She can hold the freight from Albuquerq' to Needles any
day;
The division superintendent, he come home from Monterey,
Just to see if things was pleasin' Katie Ca--a--a--sey."
Thea laughed with her mother and applauded Giddy.
Everything was so kindly and comfortable; Giddy and
Ray, and their hospitable little house, and the easy-going
country, and the stars. She curled up on the seat again
with that warm, sleepy feeling of the friendliness of the
world--which nobody keeps very long, and which she
was to lose early and irrevocably.
