The Texan | Page 8

North as cattle is--an' we're right now on our way!"
CHAPTER I
THE TRAIN STOPS
"I don't see why they had to build their old railroad down in the bottom

of this river bed." With deft fingers Alice Marcum caught back a
wind-tossed whisp of hair. "It's like travelling through a trough."
"Line of the least resistance," answered her companion as he rested an
arm upon the polished brass guard rail of the observation car. "This
river bed, running east and west, saved them millions in bridges."
The girl's eyes sought the sky-line of the bench that rose on both sides
of the mile-wide valley through which the track of the great
transcontinental railroad wound like a yellow serpent.
"It's level up there. Why couldn't they have built it along the edge?"
The man smiled: "And bridged all those ravines!" he pointed to gaps
and notches in the level sky-line where the mouths of creek beds and
coulees flashed glimpses of far mountains. "Each one of those ravines
would have meant a trestle and trestles run into big money."
"And so they built the railroad down here in this ditch where people
have to sit and swelter and look at their old shiny rails and scraggly
green bushes and dirt walls, while up there only a half a mile away the
great rolling plains stretch away to the mountains that seem so near you
could walk to them in an hour."
"But, my dear girl, it would not be practical. Railroads are built
primarily with an eye to dividends and--" The girl interrupted him with
a gesture of impatience.
"I hate things that are practical--hate even the word. There is nothing in
all the world so deadly as practicability. It is ruthless and ugly. It
disregards art and beauty and all the higher things that make life worth
living. It is a monster whose god is dollars--and who serves that god
well. What does any tourist know of the real West--the West that lies
beyond those level rims of dirt? How much do you or I know of it? The
West to us is a thin row of scrub bushes along a narrow, shallow river,
with a few little white-painted towns sprinkled along, that for all we
can see might be in Illinois or Ohio. I've been away a whole winter and
for all the West I've seen I might as well have stayed in Brooklyn."

"But certainly you enjoyed California!"
"California! Yes, as California. But California isn't the West! California
is New York with a few orange groves thrown in. It is a tourist's
paradise. A combination of New York and Palm Beach. The real West
lies east of the Rockies, the uncommercialized, unexploited--I suppose
you would add, the unpractical West. A New Yorker gets as good an
idea of the West when he travels by train to California as a Californian
would get of New York were he to arrive by way of the tube and spend
the winter in the Fritz-Waldmore."
"I rather liked California, what little I saw of it. A business trip does not
afford an ideal opportunity for sight seeing."
"You like Newport and Palm Beach, too."
The man ignored the interruption.
"But, at least, this trip has combined a good bit of business with a very
big bit of pleasure. It is two years since I have seen you and----"
"And so you're going to tell me for the twenty-sixth time in three days
that you still love me, and that you want me to marry you, and I'll have
to say 'no' again, and explain that I'm not ready to marry anybody." She
regarded him with an air of mock solemnity. "But really Mr. Winthrop
Adams Endicott I think you have improved since you struck out for
yourself into the wilds of--where was it, Ohio, or some place."
"Cincinnati," answered the man a trifle stiffly. The girl shuddered. "I
had to change cars there once." Again she eyed him critically. "Yes,
two years have made a really noticeable improvement. Do the
Cincinnati newspapers always remember to use your whole name or do
they dare to refer to Winthrop A. Endicott. If I were a reporter I really
believe I'd try it once. If you keep on improving, some day somebody is
going to call you Win."
The man flushed: "Are you never serious?" he asked.

"Never more so than this minute."
"You say you are not ready to many. You expect to marry, then,
sometime?"
"I don't expect to. I'm going to."
"Will you marry me when you are ready?"
The girl laughed. "Yes, if I can't find the man I want, I think I shall. But
he must be somewhere," she continued, after a pause during which her
eyes centred upon the point where