Santa Fe daily New Mexican. [volume] (Santa Fe, N.M.) 1885-1897, 1896-06-13

gossip. AT AL events, he came, and there
was a series Of sharp orders given, and
presently Dlckey had plenty of company
There was even a physician on the train
there usually is as you will find out if
you take the trouble to ascertain the next
time you happen to travel-and the physi-
clan, having no office hours while he was
travelling, came along with tho CON
ductor, and the brakeman, and few curl
GUS and fewer merciful passengers, to give
what help he could. The physicians prac-
tice lying in a cold country, he knew pre-
csely what to do in this emergency, and
Dickey gladly released the principal re-
sponsbility to his more experienced hands,
while he told over and over again for tho
! benefit of the curious passengers how he
CHANGED to see the little one lying on the
rear platform.
The physician worked steadily over the
child for 10 or perhaps 20 minutes.
"She'll do now," he said at last. Let
her Sleep"
The porter, under Dickey's direction,
and with his dusky palm crossed with sill
yer, made up an extra berth in the Car, in
which the child was laid. She was Sleep
ing the warm sleep of childhood, wrapped
in blankets and with Dickey's heavy over
coat thrown across her feet. The doctor
and the curious passengers had returned
to their own berths and the conductor
and his men had gone back to their work
of seeing to the safety of the train, after
assuring the porter of the last car that he
would be held to no responsibility for the
passenger he carried without ticket or
berth check.
In the last sleeper little Dickey Culver
sat and smoked, while the child slept
peacefully in the luxury of double lower
berth, and from the stateroom came the
! steady snore Of the porter.
Dckey did not even doze in the night
for that was his day, and he was puzzling
over how that child came to DO upon the
platform. Certainly she had not been
there when the train left Medicine Bow,
for he had stood upon that platform him
self and watched the station out of sight,
and it had been broad day then. The train
had stopped nowhere, and yet how absurd
it was to suppose that the child had been
put there while the cars were in motion
How could she have been-and who could
have done it2 Even Wyoming blizzard,
strong as it was, did not bear little girls
about on it's wings and deposit them upon
the platforms of the sleeping cars for pas
sengers to pick up.
1t was in the early gray of daylight
and the storm had spent it's force when
the child woke.
II want my mamma" the little one
said, smiling up into his face-the sweet
smile Of childhood just awakened.
Here was dilemma. where ID your
mamma, little onep" Dickey said-a man S
laundering capacity for saying the wrong
thing.
Why" she said, "don't you know? We
were going to my papa in California and
we rode a long ways, and we had no more
money, and the man would not let us
ride. Then we walked, and was tired
1t was cold too. My mamma put me on
the steps and told me to be good, but the
dark came, and it was cold, and so open
other door, and so I cried and went TO
Sleep"
And where did mamma go, little one?"
"Why, don't you know? She said she
was coming too"
Dickey dropped the curtains Of tho berth
and went into the forward car to look for
the conductor. One of the curious passen-
gers Of the night before, an early riser,
stopped him as he went along, and pres
emily good woman, the curious passen-
gers wife, went back into the last sleeper
and came out with the child in her arms
The matter was we'll known to all the
women on the train by this time, and, as
women will, from mysterious recesses of
handbags and satchels they drew enough
material to make the child presentable in
no time at all. She was a pretty child
enough, with dimpled cheeks and blue
eyes and golden hair, and she told her
story, all she knew Of it, over and over
again to whoever asked her, but there was
culver in the warm, red lips now when
she asked for her mamma.
Diokey in the meantime had found the
conductor. The train stopped at Green
River anyway, and that was only few
miles farther on.
When the station was reached, Dckey
and the trainmen jumped down from the
rear platform Of the last sleeper and peered
under the trucks. What with snow and
the cinders, they could see nothing at first,
but presently the brakeman muttered a
curse and crawled under the Car. The
others followed. There, on top of the
trucks, wedged in SO hard and fast that it
was amazing how she had ever gotten into
such position, was the body of a woman.
OF course it was frozen stiff. Nothing
that lives can survive the blizzard that
sweeps across the Laramie plains. And
upon the body was no scrap of paper CIV
ing the faintest clew to her name.
Dickey told the boys about it at the
Green Shades on the first night after he
! came home. They were drinking hot
| punches at the time-Dickey and Fessen.
den and the third assistant-and the third
assistant called for another and shivered
and swore in his beard that he would
adopt the little girl.
"Why, no., said Dickey, "you cannot
do that exactly either. She came to Cali
fornia to find her father, and propose
that she shall find him.
| "But how"
That, my dear fellow, is a story not
| yet told. San Francisco Bulletin.