Despairs Last Journey

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: ISO-8859-1
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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 woman-fully, with
abysmal furtive yawns; but the skirmish between the conductor and
their fellow-passenger came as a sort of godsend, and when the transfer

of a dollar bill, incredibly dirty and greasy and tattered, had brought
warfare to a close, they still had the voluntary exile to stare at. He was a
welcome change from scenery, and they stared hard.
He was a city man to look at, and had the garb of cities--tall silk hat,
well worn, but well brushed; frock-coat in similar condition; dark-gray
trousers, a little trodden at the heels; patent-leather boots; high collar;
silken scarf. Everything he wore was slightly shabby, except his linen;
but a millionaire who was disposed to be careless about his dress might
have gone so attired. People had a habit of looking twice at this
passenger, for he bore an air of being somebody; but the universal stare
which fastened on him as the train steamed away was the result of his
intent to deliver himself (at evident caprice) at a place so lonely, and so
curiously out of accord with his own aspect. What was a clean-shaven
man of cities, with silk hat, and frock-coat, and patent leathers, doing at
Beaver Tail, in the heart of the Rocky Mountains? Why had he
suddenly decided to stay there, of all places in the world? And why had
he made up his mind without having so much as seen the place? These
questions kept the occupants of the observation car in better talk than
scenery long after the lonely passenger had landed, and long after the
last wail of the engine had sounded in his ears.
If he had come here in search of landscape splendours, he might have
had his fill at once. The railside shanty stood at a height of some four
thousand feet above sea-level, but the mountains heaved vast shoulders
and white heads about him.
Below, in the tremendous gorge, a torrent ran recklessly, tearing at its
rocky confines with raging hands, and crying out in many voices like a
multitude bent on some deed of vengeance--hurrying, delaying, turning
on itself, maddening itself. Its bellowing seemed a part of universal
silence. Silence brooded here, alone, with those wild voices for an
emphasis.
Right and left the gorge swept out into dreadful magnificences of
height and