The citizen. (Honesdale, Pa.) 1908-1914, 1910-05-18
THE OLD STAGE DRIVER.
Making His Last stand in the Far
West.


1t is only in isolated regions of the
West, where the thing we call civil
ization has by chance neglected its
duties, as the plowman leaves weedy
patches in the corners of the field,
that the cowboy may still be found
unspoiled; and IL is even a rarer for
| tune to encounter a stage driver
whom readers of Bert Harte could
recognize. What the homesteader
and the sheepman have done to the
one, the railroad has done to the
other; and the sadness of Fastening
extinction hangs over them both.
Here is Estes Park-happy, un-
railroaded land!-the coming of the
stage is a daily happening, in which
every inhabitant takes an interest so
keenly personal that the event itself,
as well as the interest, becomes
spectacular.
Toward 4:30 o'clock anxiety sits
gaunt upon every countenance. Will
the stage be late? Somebody who
drove over Park Hill in the morning
said the roads were heavy A
freighter from Lyons was stuck for
| three hours on the other side of the
pass. The outlook grows gloomier
every minute, and all eyes are
strained with gazing at the dusty
road toward the place where it dis
appears behind the shoulder of hill.
1t needs no over fanciful inclination
to conceive, after listening to i'm
patient eXclamations on all sides,
that the continued tolerability of
many lives, as we'll as the further
existence of Estes Park as a habit
able place, depends upon the arrival
of that stage, with it's pouches of
mail. No one may know the golden
increments of expectancy who has
not waited for letter by stage.
A boy (of course) perched pre-
cariously on the roof of the store first
describes the stage whirling in it's
nimbus of dust around the promon-
tory. Upon his shout the groups
suddenly rearrange themselves and
the relaxation of facial muscles pres
ages new faith in the ultimate worth
of human existence. Meanwhile the
stage, in a kind of final fury of
speed. careens grandly up the stretch
of road, sweeps through the open
space ordered by the postmaster,
makes an elated swing for position,
and stops at the postoffice door with
the wheels within an inch of the
steps, but never grazing them. To
have scraped them would have been
humiliation from which the driver
never could have recovered.
The mail and the passengers out,
the driver takes his tired team to the
stable, and then loses no time re-
turning afoot to the postofiice,
where, having accepted one of many
proffered cigars, he deigns to make
| Spartan-like replies to the volumes
of questions and tentative remarks
timidly addressed to him. He is
good fellow at heart, tolerant of the
common world, and willing at times
to entertain with speech as well as
| deeds.
But to-day is not his day for loqua-
city. Down at Lyons, where the Bur-
lington ends he heard a bit of news
that one of the proposed branch
lines of the railroad now building
will probably have Estes Park for its
terminus, and his heart is filled with
sadness. By and by the crowd, see
ing his mood, leave him to his re-
Elections, and the departing people,
hurrying away by the four roads
they came, leaving him leaning
against a post, with the postmas-
ter's woolly dog squatting at his feet
and looking sympathetically up in
his face.
The stage driver has let his cigar
go out, and his eyes are fixed upon
the west, where behind the snowy
range the sun is tumbling into his
world bed of rosewood inlaid with
pearl and draped with cloud cur
tains of frail pink and tender yellow
hues. But it is not the sunset he
sees. Behind Old Flat Top yonder,
thirty miles away, are the grading
camps of the new railroad that is