ho had been increasing their express business
until they virtually monopolized that feature of common carrying
throughout the West at the close of the Civil War, took the line over.
Wells Fargo! It was the old Wells Butterfield Co. again. The first
winners in the struggle were the last.

The railroad came. Men said that the day of adventure was over. But
this adventure has not ended yet.

While this story was being written another pioneer died on that
overland mail route. And when his aero-plane came fluttering down out
of a driving snowstorm to crash, in a mass of tangled wreckage, on
the side of Elk Mountain, Wyoming, Lieutenant E. V. Wales went to
his death within a rifle-shot of the road where so many of his
predecessors gave up their lives trying--even as he was then
striving--to quicken communication between the Atlantic and the
Pacific.

BOOT-HILL

Boot-Hill! Back in the wild old days you found one on the new town's
outskirts and one where the cattle trail came down to the ford, and
one was at the summit of the pass. There was another on the mesa
overlooking the water-hole where the wagon outfits halted after the
long dry drive. The cow-boys read the faded writing on the wooden
headboards and from the stories made long ballads which they sang to
the herds on the bedding grounds. The herds have long since vanished,
the cow-boys have ridden away over the sky-line, the plaintive songs
are slipping from the memories of a few old men, and we go riding by
the places where those headboards stood, oblivious.

Of the frontier cemeteries whose dead came to their ends, shod in
accordance with the grim phrase of their times, there remains one just
outside the town of Tombstone to the north. Here straggling mesquite
bushes grow on the summit of the ridge; cacti and ocatilla sprawl over
the sun-baked earth hiding between their thorny stems the headboards
and the long narrow heaps of stones which no man could mistake. Some
of these headboards still bear traces of black-lettered epitaphs which
tell how death came to strong men in the full flush of youth. But the
vast majority of the boulder heaps are marked by cedar slabs whose
penciled legends the elements have long since washed away.

The sun shines hot here on the summit of the ridge. Across the wide
mesquite flat the granite ramparts of the Dragoons frown all the long
day, and the bleak hill graveyard frowns back at them. Thus the men
who came to this last rest