Waterbury evening Democrat. [volume] (Waterbury, Conn.) 1887-1895, 1894-05-02

! time to get out an equestrian bill, and it
is too clean to show activity. The editor
hardly had time to utter the words ''Din-
ma We hear the slogan?" before the town
had taken wings and fled. His rusty slo-
gan, with $40 express charges on it, still
stands behind the door.
He did not even have time to call a
halt before the boom burst and broke all
the window glass in town. l presume
there are $50 houses, large and small, at
Grand Rivers. but no geraniuns grow
in the windows. No wheelbarrows to
fall over stand by the open gate. No
baby carriages scare the horses on the
street. No honest Waterbury watchdog
comes out to gnaw the ear of the sandy
shote or bark at the train. AS we pause
there to fulfill our time card provisions
the thin, cream colored hog eats a little
axle grease from the cars, warns his
person against hot box and goes back
to his melancholy exile, roofing up sur
veyors' stakes and eating the angle
worms that grow where once the livery
stable was at
You remember how everybody gets
panicky when the train stops out on the
plains if you have been there during the
road agent season and how there is al
ways some one raised up on the Mexican
spur of the moment, as it were. to tell
everybody else what the matter is. He
does not really need to know what thu
matter is. Just something to tell the
people is all he needs. It attracts atta1i.
ton and gives the passengers something
to talk about till the truth is ascertained.
Once l was riding south from Chey-
enne to Denver on one of Egbert's passes
to participate as the honored guest in a
large banquet presided over by Gene
Field, when the train stopped suddenly
in the middle of big prairie dog me.
tropolis, and an eastern man just across
the aisle from me turned pale as he ejac-
ulated through real camels hair mus
tache:
Me Gawd, we are held up!'
We could see nothing wrong, but
something was wrong else we would not
have paused i'll shoreless sea of bunch
grass 600 miles from hard timber enough
to make an AK helve.
A bride in from Keokuk put her jew
els in her hair swiftly, and her little liz
ard skin prise and ticket went down
the back Of her neck mighty cheerful,
thought.
To open a conversation with her |
said: Madam, excnse the bluntness of
penniless frontiersman in cavalry trou-
sers faced and reseated with buckskin,
but if it should turn out to be Indians
instead of banditti they would get all
those priceless gems and moss agates OF
yours at the same time they took your
beautiful scalp, and they would swap
the whole thing at Antelope station or
Evans, Colo, for a liquid which we in
our untutored way call sheep dip. 1t
biteth like serpent and stingeth like a
spider"
So + held the jewels for her in my
own hair till we were once more safe,
and I also told her to lean on me. as the
groom did not come with her on the
wedding tour, harvesting having come
on week earlier than usual in Iowa
that year. So there was no one else upon
whom she could lean. l can still recall
the incident distinctly.
Soon the train began to back up.
Whether the road agents were doing it
or the engineer, vi ct arms, could not
tell, and hated to stick my head out,
fearing that it would be shot into and
disfigured for life. We backed for about
seven miles at low rate of speed and
stopped at a little coaling station, the
name of which have forgotten, for that
happened II years ago.
/ Pretty soon l nerved myself up suffi-
GENTLY to look out and see what our fate
was to be. We had also run out of every
thing to talk about, SO lifted the sunny
head from my breast, where it had bro
ken the stem of my pipe, which was in
that pocket, and setting the fair one
again upright in the seat I went eau
tiously outside.
I found that, as we stopped there an
hour before on our way down, the fire.
man had forgotten his shovel acciden-