The Denver Express | Page 3

stentorian tones:
"Pawnee Junction; twenty minutes for refreshments!"

II
When the celebrated Rocky Mountain gold excitement broke out, more
than twenty years ago, and people painted "Pike's Peak or Bust" on the
canvas covers of their wagons and started for the diggings, they
established a "trail" or "trace" leading in a southwesterly direction from
the old one to California.
At a certain point on this trail a frontiersman named Barker built a
forlorn ranch-house and corral, and offered what is conventionally
called "entertainment for man and beast."
For years he lived there, dividing his time between fighting the Indians
and feeding the passing emigrants and their stock. Then the first
railroad to Denver was built, taking another route from the Missouri,
and Barker's occupation was gone. He retired with his gains to St.
Louis and lived in comfort.
Years passed on, and the "extension" over which our train is to pass
was planned. The old pioneers were excellent natural engineers and
their successors could find no better route than they had chosen. Thus it
was that "Barker's" became, during the construction period, an
important point, and the frontiersman's name came to figure on
time-tables. Meanwhile the place passed through a process of evolution
which would have delighted Darwin. In the party of engineers which
first camped there was Sinclair, and it was by his advice that the
contractors selected it for division headquarters. Then came drinking
"saloons" and gambling houses--alike the inevitable concomitant and
the bane of Western settlements; then scattered houses and shops and a
shabby so-called hotel, in which the letting of miserable rooms (divided

from each other by canvas partitions) was wholly subordinated to the
business of the bar. Before long, Barker's had acquired a worse
reputation than even other towns of its type, the abnormal and uncanny
aggregations of squalor and vice which dotted the plains in those days;
and it was at its worst when Sinclair returned thither and took up his
quarters in the engineers' building. The passion for gambling was
raging, and to pander thereto were collected as choice a lot of
desperadoes as ever "stacked" cards or loaded dice. It came to be
noticed that they were on excellent terms with a man called "Jeff"
Johnson, who was lessee of the hotel; and to be suspected that said
Johnson, in local parlance, "stood in with" them. With this man had
come to Barker's his daughter Sarah, commonly known as "Sally," a
handsome girl, with a straight, lithe figure, fine features, reddish auburn
hair, and dark-blue eyes. It is but fair to say that even the "toughs" of a
place like Barker's show some respect for the other sex, and Miss
Sally's case was no exception to the rule. The male population admired
her; they said she "put on heaps of style"; but none of them had seemed
to make any progress in her good graces.
On a pleasant afternoon just after the track had been laid some miles
west of Barker's, and construction trains were running with some
regularity to and from the end thereof, Sinclair sat on the rude veranda
of the engineers' quarters, smoking his well-colored meerschaum and
looking at the sunset. The atmosphere had been so clear during the day
that glimpses were had of Long's and Pike's peaks, and as the young
engineer gazed at the gorgeous cloud display he was thinking of the
miners' quaint and pathetic idea that the dead "go over the Range."
"Nice-looking, ain't it, Major?" asked a voice at his elbow, and he
turned to see one of the contractors' officials taking a seat near him.
"More than nice-looking to my mind, Sam," he replied. "What is the
news to-day?"
"Nothin' much. There's a sight of talk about the doin's of them faro an'
keno sharps. The boys is gettin' kind o' riled, fur they allow the game
ain't on the square wuth a cent. Some of 'em down to the tie-camp wuz
a-talkin' about a vigilance committee, an' I wouldn't be surprised ef

they meant business. Hev yer heard about the young feller that come in
a week ago from Laramie an' set up a new faro-bank?"
"No. What about him?"
"Wa'al, yer see he's a feller thet's got a lot of sand an' ain't afeard of
nobody, an' he's allowed to hev the deal to his place on the square every
time. Accordin' to my idee, gamblin's about the wust racket a feller kin
work, but it takes all sorts of men to make a world, an' ef the boys is
bound to hev a game, I calkilate they'd like to patronize his bank. Thet's
made the old crowd mighty mad an' they're a-talkin' about puttin' up a
job of cheatin' on him an' then stringin' him up. Besides, I kind o'