The Denver Express

The Denver Express, by A. A.
Hayes

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Title: The Denver Express From "Belgravia" for January, 1884
Author: A. A. Hayes
Release Date: October 24, 2007 [EBook #23180]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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DENVER EXPRESS ***

Produced by David Widger

THE DENVER EXPRESS
By A. A. Hayes
From "Belgravia" for January, 1884

I
Any one who has seen an outward-bound clipper ship getting under
way, and heard the "shanty-songs" sung by the sailors as they toiled at
capstan and halliards, will probably remember that rhymeless but
melodious refrain--
"I'm bound to see its muddy waters, Yeo ho! that rolling river; Bound
to see its muddy waters, Yeo ho! the wild Missouri."
Only a happy inspiration could have impelled Jack to apply the
adjective "wild" to that ill-behaved and disreputable river which, tipsily
bearing its enormous burden of mud from the far Northwest, totters,
reels, runs its tortuous course for hundreds on hundreds of miles and
which, encountering the lordly and thus far well-behaved Mississippi at
Alton, and forcing its company upon this splendid river (as if some
drunken fellow should lock arms with a dignified pedestrian),
contaminates it all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.
At a certain point on the banks of this river, or rather--as it has the habit
of abandoning and destroying said banks--at a safe distance therefrom,
there is a town from which a railroad takes its departure, for its long
climb up the natural incline of the Great Plains, to the base of the
mountains; hence the importance to this town of the large but
somewhat shabby building serving as terminal station. In its smoky
interior, late in the evening and not very long ago, a train was nearly
ready to start. It was a train possessing a certain consideration. For the
benefit of a public easily gulled and enamored of grandiloquent terms,
it was advertised as the "Denver Fast Express"; sometimes, with
strange unfitness, as the "Lightning Express"; "elegant" and "palatial"
cars were declared to be included therein; and its departure was one of
the great events of the twenty-four hours in the country round about. A
local poet described it in the "live" paper of the town, cribbing from an
old Eastern magazine and passing off as original the lines--
"Again we stepped into the street, A train came thundering by Drawn

by the snorting iron steed Swifter than eagles fly. Rumbled the wheels,
the whistle shrieked, Far rolled the smoky cloud, Echoed the hills, the
valleys shook, The flying forests bowed."
The trainmen, on the other hand, used no fine phrases. They called it
simply "Number Seventeen"; and, when it started, said it had "pulled
out."
On the evening in question, there it stood, nearly ready. Just behind the
great hissing locomotive, with its parabolic headlight and its coal-laden
tender, came the baggage, mail, and express cars; then the passenger
coaches, in which the social condition of the occupants seemed to be in
inverse ratio to their distance from the engine. First came emigrants,
"honest miners," "cowboys," and laborers; Irishmen, Germans,
Welshmen, Mennonites from Russia, quaint of garb and speech, and
Chinamen. Then came along cars full of people of better station, and
last the great Pullman "sleepers," in which the busy black porters were
making up the berths for well-to-do travelers of diverse nationalities
and occupations.
It was a curious study for a thoughful observer, this motley crowd of
human beings sinking all differences of race, creed, and habits in the
common purpose to move westward--to the mountain fastnesses, the
sage-brush deserts and the Golden Gate.
The warning bell had sounded, and the fireman leaned far out for the
signal. The gong struck sharply, the conductor shouted, "All aboard,"
and raised his hand; the tired ticket-seller shut his window, and the
train moved out of the station, gathered way as it cleared the outskirts
of the town, rounded a curve, entered on an absolutely straight line, and,
with one long whistle from the engine, settled down to its work.
Through the night hours it sped on, past lonely ranches and infrequent
stations, by and across shallow streams fringed with cottonwood trees,
over the greenish-yellow buffalo grass near the old trail where many a
poor emigrant, many a bold frontiersman, many a brave soldier, had
laid his bones but a short time before.
Familiar as they may be, there is something strangely impressive about

all-night journeys by