Page:Cy Warman--The express messenger and other tales of the rail.djvu/176

164 night frightened me and I told Doc so, and so we parted.

A few years later, when the west-bound train stopped at a little bleak and dreary mountain town where I, having gone West, had elected to drop anchor, I looked out from the car window and saw Doc sitting close up to the crupper of an old sorrel horse that was hitched to an express wagon.

I went over to him at once, for I was lonesome. A mountain town is not a thing one is apt to love at first sight. Desolate. That is better than four columns of agate to describe the place. The dry March winds came out of the cañon and swept the sand of the mesa up into eddies that swished and swirled in around your collar and cut your face. The sunlight was so dazzling that it bewildered one and seemed unreal, and the cold winds were constantly contradicting its warmth.

"Are you homesick, Doc?" I asked, as I rode up town with him, for he was there to haul people and their baggage up to the hotel.

"Nop," he said, "it's the dry wind; it's busted my lip so that I look like I'm goin' to