Midway between two sections of this still unfinished line that,rail after rail and mile upon mile,crawled over the earth's face visibly during the constructing hours of each new day,lay a camp.To this point these unjoined pieces were heading,and here at length they met.Camp Separation it had been fitly called,but how should the American railway man afford time to say that?Separation was pretty and apt,but needless;and with the sloughing of two syllables came the brief,businesslike result--Separ.Chicago,1137-1/2miles.It was labelled on a board large almost as the hut station.A Y-switch,two sidings,the fat water-tank and steam-pump,and a section-house with three trees before it composed the north side.South of the track were no trees.There was one long siding by the corrals and cattle-chute,there were a hovel where plug tobacco and canned goods were for sale,a shed where you might get your horse shod,a wire fence that at shipping times enclosed bales of pressed hay,the hotel,the stage stable,and the little station--some seven shanties all told.Between them were spaces of dust,the immediate plains engulfed them,and through their midst ran the far-vanishing railroad,to which they hung like beads on a great string from horizon to horizon.Agreat east-and-west string,one end in the rosy sun at morning,and one in the crimson sun at night.Beyond each sky-line lay cities and ports where the world went on out of sight and hearing.This lone steel thread had been stretched across the continent because it was the day of haste and hope,when dollars seemed many and hard times were few;and from the Yellowstone to the Rio Grande similar threads were stretching,and little Separs by dispersed hundreds hung on them,as it were in space eternal.
Can you wonder that vigorous young men with pistols should,when they came to such a place,shoot them off to let loose their unbounded joy of living?
And yet it was not this merely that began the custom,but an error of the agent's.The new station was scarce created when one morning Honey Wiggin with the Virginian had galloped innocently in from the round-up to telegraph for some additional cars.
"I'm dead on to you!"squealed the official,dropping flat at the sight of them;and bang went his gun at them.They,most naturally,thought it was a maniac,and ran for their lives among the supports of the water-tank,while he remained anchored with his weapon,crouched behind the railing that fenced him and his apparatus from the laity;and some fifteen strategic minutes passed before all parties had crawled forth to an understanding,and the message was written and paid for and comfortably despatched.The agent was an honest creature,but of tame habits,sent for the sake of his imperfect lungs to this otherwise inappropriate air.He had lived chiefly in mid-West towns,a serious reader of our comic weeklies;hence the apparition of Wiggin and the Virginian had reminded him sickeningly of bandits.He had express money in the safe,he explained to them,and this was a hard old country,wasn't it?and did they like good whiskey?
They drank his whiskey,but it was not well to have mentioned that about the bandits.Both were aware that when shaved and washed of their round-up grime they could look very engaging.The two cow-punchers rode out,not angry,but grieved that a man come here to dwell among them should be so tactless.
"If we don't get him used to us,"observed the Virginian,"he and his pop-gun will be guttin'some blameless man."Forthwith the cattle country proceeded to get the agent used to it.The news went over the sage-brush from Belle Fourche to Sweetwater,and playful,howling horsemen made it their custom to go rioting with pistols round the ticket office,educating the agent.His lungs improved,and he came dimly to smile at this life which he did not understand.But the company discerned no humor whatever in having its water-tank perforated,which happened twice;and sheriffs and deputies and other symptoms of authority began to invest Separ.Now what should authority do upon these free plains,this wilderness of do-as-you-please,where mere breathing the air was like inebriation?The large,headlong children who swept in from the sage-brush and out again meant nothing that they called harm until they found themselves resisted.Then presently happened that affair of the cow-catcher;and later a too-zealous marshal,come about a mail-car they had side-tracked and held with fiddles,drink,and petticoats,met his death accidentally,at which they were sincerely sorry for about five minutes.They valued their own lives as little,and that lifts them forever from baseness at least.So the company,concluding such things must be endured for a while yet,wrote their letter,and you have seen how wrong the letter went.All it would do would be from now on to fasten upon Separ its code of recklessness;to make shooting the water-tank (for example)part of a gentleman's deportment when he showed himself in town.
It was not now the season of heavy shipping;to-night their work would be early finished,and then they were likely to play after their manner.To arrive in such a place on her way to her brother,the felon in jail,made the girl's journey seem doubly forlorn to me as I wandered down to the corrals.
A small,bold voice hailed me."Hello,you!"it said;and here was Billy Lusk,aged nine,in boots and overalls,importantly useless with a stick,helping the men prod the steers at the chute.
"Thought you were at school,"said I.
"Ah,school's quit,"returned Billy,and changed the subject."Say,Lin's hunting you.He's angling to eat at the hotel.I'm grubbing with the outfit."And Billy resumed his specious activity.
