The Bottineau pioneer. (Bottineau, N.D.) 1885-1895, 1886-10-21

appealing eyes, he continued:
1--WE ran all fair and on time till we
was about 200 miles beyond Omaha.
Then thesnow began. It didn't seem
much atsiirst. The women folks in
the trainsrather liked it. They all
crowded to the windows to see, and
the children hurrahed- Anything
seemed "a pleasant change after
the sagesbrush, l suppose. But
as it went on coming, and the
drifts grewdeep, and thet.cars had to
run slow, the older ones began to look
serious, and I can tell you that we
Ewho had charge of the TRAIN felt SO.
1--WE vas liust between two OF the
feeding stations, and put on all the
steam W ecould hoping to push through
to where previsins could be got at in
lease we had ITO stop. But it wasn't
tno use. The snow kept coming. I
never see it come so. The fakes look
! ed as big as sseucers, and the drifts
! piled so quick that, when we finally
| stuck, in about ten minutes no one
| could see outaof the windows. The
train would have been clear buried
| over if the brakeman and thes porters
hadn't gone the svhole length ever the
roots every half-&our, and swept it off
with brooms and. shovels. We had a
lot.0f shovels aboard, by gooG luck,
'orsnSthlng else could have saved us
frombeing banked.up outright. But it
was terrible hard work, / car tell
you. There wasn't no more laughing
among the passengers by the time it
come to that, and ahe children stop
ped h~urGahing."
."Oh. the poor little things! What
did they do? Were there many or
board? Was there plenty for them TO
eat?"
"That Was the worst Of il. These
wasn't plenty for any one to eat. We
had stuck last midway .of the feeding
stations, and there wasn't q great
deal of anything on board besides
| what the 7 passengers had in their
luhch baskets. One lady she had a
| tin OF condensed milk, and they mixed
that up for the babies-there was ten
of 'em-and so they got Gu pretty
we'll. But there was about Eve other
| children, not babies, but quite little,
and Idon't know what they would
have done if it hadn't been Tor the
young lady" '
THE young lady'' said Miss Vaughn,
looking up with some surprise, for
with the words a curious tremble had
come into the engineers voice, and a
dark flush into his bronzed face.
"What young lady was that?"
1t was q moment or two before
John Scott answered the question.
II don't know what she was called"
he said, slowly. II never knew. She
was the only one ON the train, so we
just called her the young lady. She
was travelling alone, but her folks had
asked the conductor to look after her.
She was going out to some relative of
hers-her brother, I guess, who was
sick down to Sacramento. That was
how she come to be there"
"Were the children under her cnre?"
"No, ma'am; she was all alone, as l
told you; but she took them under
her ARE from the very first. They
had their fathers and mothers along
three Of them had, at least, and the
other two had their mother and a
but the young lady seemed to be
ablo. to do anything with them.
The poor little things was
half starved you see, and there wasn't
anything to amuse 'em in the dark
car, and one of them, who was sickly,
fretted all day and most all night,
and the mother didn't seem to have
no faculty or no backbone to her; but
whenever the young lady came round,
that sick young one and all the rest
would stop crying, and seem just as
clipper as if it was Summertime out
doors and the whole train full of
candy.
II don't see how she did it, he went
on, meditatively, throwing ashovelful
of coal in at the furnacedoor "Some
women is made that way, I suppose.
AS soon as we see how things were 60
ing, and how bad they were likely to
be-, that girl kind of set herself to keep
along. She had a mighty gentle way
with her, too. You'd never have
guessed that she was so plucky.
Plucky! By George, l never saw any
thing like her pluck"
"Was she pretty?" asked Miss
Vaughn, urged by a. true feminine
curiosity.
swell I don't know ifyou'd a called
her so or not. She was a slender built
girl, and her face looked sort of kind
and bright both to ME. Her voice was
as soft-well. as soft as a voice can be,
and it kind of sang when she felt
happy. She looked you straight in
the eyes when she spoke. I don't be-
lieve the worst man ever lived could
have told that girl a lie if it had been
to save his life. Her hair was brown.
She was different from girls in general,
somehow"
II think we must say that she was
pretty" observed Miss Vaughn, with
a smile. '7.
II amt so sure of that. There's
plenty of ladies come over the road
since that l suppose folks would say
was better looking than she was,
but l never see any face quite
like hers. It was still like a lake,
and you seemed to feel az if there
was depth to it.. And the farther
you went down the sweeter it got.
She never made any rustling when she
walked. She wasn't that kind"
Another pause, which Miss Vaughn
was careful not to break.
81 don't know what them children