Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922, 1906-06-03

II they are left alone long enough. and the
patent medicine man does not exterminsto
them
Now and then. at some bleak station,
where the scenery Is blue sky and tawny
earth. ! discover hand OF Indians work
ing on the track. They are a little darker
than the Comanches and Sioux, and they
wear mustaches, but they are dressed in
the same old wrecks Of clothes as the
reservation Indians; they clan by them
selves avoiding the white man and re-
gardlng him suspiciously; they smoke
brutes of pipes, now and then they quar-
rel, and one Of them is pinned to the
ground with dozen or fifteen knives
am sorry to notice this decadence. for they
are more dirty than the Indians OF twenty
five years ago. more industrious and more
revengeful Suddenly they begin to jabber
Italian, and another illusion is gone.
Beside the Italians the railroads are en-
ploylng Huns and Slavs as section hands.
Dull-faced men, addicted TO cruel pipes and
rum, when they can find any to addict
themselves to. but tolerable workmen, who
live like gypsies, moving from place to
place with great show Of bundles and
bedding, and camping in those makeshift
shantes such as italian laborers occupy
willing to promise, are occupied by as
widely variegated menageries as any You
can find in the Bronx. Some Of them do
not bother with houses, but live in wagons
and I discovered. with temperate JOY a
genuine old prairie schooner doing duty at
one place In Wyoming, where Il had been
fitted for occupancy by putting canvas
hood over Il and rigging the stovepipe up
through the middle OF this cover. The last
prairie schooner l had seen in service was
in Kansas a few years ago, and the town
turned out to look. because II was driven
by a long-haired Rip Van Wrinkle and his
clay-coored wife, pulled by a hump backed
mule and had a hy-blown, moth-eaten yell
low dog tied by a bit of ships cable to the
under side of It.
At Sherman, where we are 5000 feet
above the sea- and don't know it, there
are snow drifts beside the track and a
temperature OF nearly 90 degrees in the
shade for an hour or so, but there is the
cooling view of the Rockies, their vast
snow fields an ethereal silver in the hazy
| light. and as we enter the desert there is
the sage brush, one remaining indication
of the west, pushing it's tender and high
scented leaves out of the alkali, or, up
rooted by the wind, rolling Enthusiastically
/
! moss agates like ghost plants on a spree.
But the old rudeness and heartiness have
! gone out of the towns along the way; they
are just commonplace, everyday settle
ments. like those in middle New York
with girls in shirt waists and men in hand
me-downs. Rarely is the sombrero seem
even among the COW punchers who come
in from the ranches, and few ranches have
COW punchers any more; and as for re-
volvers l warrant that a roundup of citi
zens on the east side of Manhattan would
recover more weapons than you would find
in the clothes of an equal number Of mer
in Hells Hollow, Placerville or Stand Pat
And they use them less in the west thar
we do, and are punished more promptly
when they use them, too.
A cruel telegram recalls me before thu
journey to the coast is finished so tina
conditions in the Salt Lake basin and tn,
Sierras are surlnised: but imagine tina
they will not differ from those elsewhere
and the mournful conclusion is that thu
west is a west no more.