deep and wild canyons, now an environment
of strange and grotesque rock-formations, castles, battlements,
churches, statues. The antelope fleetly runs, and the coyote skulks
away from the track, and the gray wolf howls afar off. It is for all
the world, to one's fancy, as if a bit of civilization, a family or
community, its belongings and surroundings complete, were flying
through regions barbarous and inhospitable.

From the cab of Engine No. 32, the driver of the Denver Express saw,
showing faintly in the early morning, the buildings grouped about the
little station ten miles ahead, where breakfast awaited his passengers.
He looked at his watch; he had just twenty minutes in which to run the
distance, as he had run it often before. Something, however, traveled
faster than he. From the smoky station out of which the train passed
the night before, along the slender wire stretched on rough poles at
the side of the track, a spark of that mysterious something which we
call electricity flashed at the moment he returned the watch to his
pocket; and in five minutes' time the station-master came out on the
platform, a little more thoughtful than his wont, and looked eastward
for the smoke of the train. With but three of the passengers in that
train has this tale especially to do, and they were all in the new and
comfortable Pullman "City of Cheyenne." One was a tall, well-made man
of about thirty--blond, blue-eyed, bearded, straight, sinewy, alert. Of
all in the train he seemed the most thoroughly at home, and the
respectful greeting of the conductor, as he passed through the car,
marked him as an officer of the road. Such was he--Henry Sinclair,
assistant engineer, quite famed on the line, high in favor with the
directors, and a rising man in all ways. It was known on the road that
he was expected in Denver, and there were rumors that he was to
organize the parties for the survey of an important "extension." Beside
him sat his pretty young wife. She was a New Yorker--one could tell at
first glance--from the feather of her little bonnet, matching the gray
traveling dress, to the tips of her dainty boots; and one, too, at whom
old Fifth Avenue promenaders would have turned to look. She had a
charming figure, brown hair, hazel eyes, and an expression at once
kind, intelligent, and spirited. She had cheerfully left a luxurious
home to follow the young engineer's fortunes; and it was well known
that those fortunes had been materia