The Cross-Cut | Page 7

of the way.
That's a narrow-gauge line, and Clear Creek 's been on a rampage. It
took out about two hundred feet of trestle, and there won't be a train

into Ohadi for a week."
The disappointment on Fairchild's face was more than apparent, almost
boyish in its depression. The ticket seller leaned closer to the wicket.
"Stranger out here?"
"Very much of one."
"In a hurry to get to Ohadi?"
"Yes."
"Then you can go uptown and hire a taxi--they 've got big cars for
mountain work and there are good roads all the way. It 'll cost fifteen or
twenty dollars. Or--"
Fairchild smiled. "Give me the other system if you 've got one. I 'm not
terribly long on cash--for taxis."
"Certainly. I was just going to tell you about it. No use spending that
money if you 've got a little pep, and it is n't a matter of life or death.
Go up to the Central Loop--anybody can direct you--and catch a street
car for Golden. That eats up fifteen miles and leaves just twenty-three
miles more. Then ask somebody to point out the road over Mount
Lookout. Machines go along there every few minutes--no trouble at all
to catch a ride. You 'll be in Ohadi in no time."
Fairchild obeyed the instructions, and in the baggage room rechecked
his trunk to follow him, lightening his traveling bag at the same time
until it carried only necessities. A luncheon, then the street car. Three
quarters of an hour later, he began the five-mile trudge up the broad,
smooth, carefully groomed automobile highway which masters Mount
Lookout. A rumbling sound behind him, then as he stepped to one side,
a grimy truck driver leaned out to shout as he passed:
"Want a lift? Hop on! Can't stop--too much grade."
A running leap, and Fairchild seated himself on the tailboard of the

truck, swinging his legs and looking out over the fading plains as the
truck roared and clattered upward along the twisting mountain road.
Higher, higher, while the truck labored along the grade, and while the
buildings in Golden below shrank smaller and smaller. The reservoir
lake in the center of the town, a broad expanse of water only a short
time before, began to take on the appearance of some great, blue-white
diamond glistening in the sun. Gradually a stream outlined itself in
living topography upon a map which seemed as large as the world itself.
Denver, fifteen miles away, came into view, its streets showing like
seams in a well-sewn garment, the sun, even at this distance, striking a
sheen from the golden dome of the capitol building. Higher! The
chortling truck gasped at the curves and tugged on the straightaway, but
Robert Fairchild had ceased to hear. His every attention was centered
on the tremendous stage unfolded before him, the vast stretches of the
plains rolling away beneath, even into Kansas and Wyoming and
Nebraska, hundreds of miles away, plains where once the buffalo had
roamed in great, shaggy herds, where once the emigrant trains had
made their slow, rocking progress into a Land of Heart's Desire; and he
began to understand something of the vastness of life, the great scope
of ambition; new things to a man whose world, until two weeks before,
had been the four chalky walls of an office.
Cool breezes from pine-fringed gulches brushed his cheek and
smoothed away the burning touch of a glaring sun; the truck turned into
the hairpin curves of the steep ascent, giving him a glimpse of deep
valleys, green from the touch of flowing streams, of great clefts with
their vari-hued splotches of granite, and on beyond, mound after mound
of pine-clothed hills, fringing the peaks of eternal snow, far away. The
blood suddenly grew hot in Fairchild's veins; he whistled, he repressed
a wild, spasmodic desire to shout. The spirit that had been the spirit of
the determined men of the emigrant trains was his now; he remembered
that he was traveling slowly toward a fight--against whom, or what, he
knew not--but he welcomed it just the same. The exaltation of rarefied
atmosphere was in his brain; dingy offices were gone forever. He was
free; and for the first time in his life, he appreciated the meaning of the
word.

Upward, still upward! The town below became merely a checkerboard
thing, the lake a dot of gleaming silver, the stream a scintillating ribbon
stretching off into the foothills. A turn, and they skirted a tremendous
valley, its slopes falling away in sheer descents from the roadway. A
darkened, moist stretch of road, fringed by pines, then a jogging
journey over rolling table-land. At last came a voice from the driver's
seat, and Fairchild turned like a man suddenly awakened.
"Turn off up here