Argosy and Railroad Man's Magazine, Vol. 107 No. 3 — page 28: what you’re looking at

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370 More than that, the train was picking up speed, as if the engineer wanted to get out of sight and hearing of that demonstrative crowd, and put his humiliation behind him as quickly as possible. No man’s horse could make a start with planks under his feet, run two hundred yards and overtake that train, no matter what the inducement. That was the thought of every man who sat a saddle there and stretched his neck to witness this unparalleled streak of folly. If Whetstone had run swiftly in the first race, he fairly whistled through the air like a wild duck in the second. Before he had run the length of the platform he had gained on the train, his nose almost even with the brass railing over which the girl leaned, the handkerchief in her hand. Mid- way between the platform and ‘the cattle- guard they saw the duke lean in his saddle and snatch the white favor from her hand. The people on the train-end cheered this feat of quick resolution, quicker action. But the girl whose handkerchief the duke had won only leaned on the railing, holding fast with both hands, as if she offered her lips to be kissed, and looked at him with a pleasure in her face that he could read as the train bore her onward into the west. The duke sat there with his hat in his hand, gazing after her, only her straining face in his vision, centered out of the dust and widening distance like a star that a man gazes on to fix his course before it is overwhelmed by clouds. She raised her hand as the dust closed in the wake of the train. He thought she beckoned him. So she came, and went, crossing his way in the Bad Lands that hour of his small triumph, and left her perfumed token of appreciation in his hand. The duke put it away in the pocket of his shirt beneath the calfskin vest, the faint delicacy of its per- fume rising to his nostrils like the elusive scent of a violet for which one searches the _ woodland and cannot find. The dusty hills had gulped the train that carried her before the duke rode round the station and joined his noisy comrades. Everybody shook hands with him, every- body invited him to have a drink. He put them off—friend, acquaintance, stranger, on ARGOSY AND RAILROAD MAN’S MAGAZINE. their pressing invitation to drink—with the declaration that his horse came first in his consideration. After he had put Whetstone in the livery barn and fed him, he would join them for a round, he said. _ They trooped into the saloon to square their bets, the duke going his way to the barn. than before, to come out from time to time, mount their horses, gallop up and down the road that answered Misery for a street, and shoot good ammunition into the harm- less air. Somebody remarked after a while that the duke was a long time feeding that horse. Taterleg and others went to investigate. He had not been there, the keeper of the livery- barn said. A further look around, exhaust- ing all the possible hiding-places of Misery. The duke was not there. “ Well,” said Taterleg, puzzled, “I guess he’s went.” CHAPTER V. FEET UPON THE ROAD. = “| ALWAYS thought I’d go out West, but somehow I never got around to it,” Taterleg said. ‘“ How far do you aim to go, duke?” “ As far as the notion takes me, I guess.” It was about a month after the race that this talk between Taterleg and the duke took place, on a calm afternoon in a camp far from the site of that one into which the pedler of cutlery had trundled his disabled bicycle a year before. The duke had put off his calfskin vest, the weather being too hot for it. Even Taterleg had made sacri- fices to appearance in favor of comfort, his piratical corduroys being replaced by over- alls. The duke had quit his job, moved by the desire to travel on and see the world, he said. He said no word to any man about the motive behind that desire, very naturally, for he was not the kind of a man who opened the door of his heart. But to himself he confessed the hunger for an unknown face, for the lure of an onward-beckoning hand which he was no longer able to ignore. There they drank and grew noisier © COMICEDOO© ‘eo S Co mM