cknowledged it. The thing in him that Harvey Merrick had
loved must have gone underground with Harvey Merrick's coffin; for it
never spoke again, and Jim got the cold he died of driving across the
Colorado mountains to defend one of Phelps's sons, who had got into
trouble out there by cutting government timber.

"A Death in the Desert"

Everett Hilgarde was conscious that the man in the seat across the
aisle was looking at him intently. He was a large, florid man, wore a
conspicuous diamond solitaire upon his third finger, and Everett judged
him to be a traveling salesman of some sort. He had the air of an
adaptable fellow who had been about the world and who could keep cool
and clean under almost any circumstances.

The "High Line Flyer," as this train was derisively called among
railroad men, was jerking along through the hot afternoon over the
monotonous country between Holdridge and Cheyenne. Besides the blond
man and himself the only occupants of the car were two dusty,
bedraggled-looking girls who had been to the Exposition at Chicago,
and who were earnestly discussing the cost of their first trip out of
Colorado. The four uncomfortable passengers were covered with a sediment
of fine, yellow dust which clung to their hair and eyebrows like gold
powder. It blew up in clouds from the bleak, lifeless country through
which they passed, until they were one color with the sagebrush and
sandhills. The gray-and-yellow desert was varied only by occasional
ruins of deserted towns, and the little red boxes of station houses,
where the spindling trees and sickly vines in the bluegrass yards made
little green reserves fenced off in that confusing wilderness of sand.

As the slanting rays of the sun beat in stronger and stronger through
the car windows, the blond gentleman asked the ladies' permission to
remove his coat, and sat in his lavender striped shirt sleeves, with a
black silk handkerchief tucked carefully about his collar. He had seemed
interested in Everett since they had boarded the train at Holdridge, and
kept glancing at him curiously and then looking reflectively out of
the window, as though he were trying to recall something. But wherever
Everett went someone was almost sure to look at him with that curious
interest, and it had ceased to embarrass or annoy him. Presently the
stranger, seeming satisfied with his observation, leaned back in his
seat, half-closed his eyes, and began softly to whistle the