Bisbee daily review., 1917-10-28
THE PULLMAN
 PASSENGERS AND
 THE APACHES

The newspaper man raised his eyes from the contemplation of the little camp fire and looked across the end less waves of green mesquite. Far away could be heard the deep-throated hum of the oncoming Golden State Limited train. Soon, in the gather ing twilight gloom, he could see the radiance of the headlight. A little later, with a rush and a roar, the long string of Pullmans, rolled by.
 Tom Hughes raised his head from the frying pan over which he was squatting by the fire and looked at the big train as it struggled with the grade. "Humphl" he grunted. "P.l and Kankakee and Ashtabula and In- dianapolis people looking out of those windows at us lowering around this fire will swear that we are a party of Apache Indians camping by the side of the war trail"
 The newspaper man declined the bet. It looked like too much of d cinch for Hughes. From distance, and Tn the flickering light of the fire, the party might well be mistaken for Indians, Hughes was dressed in khaki and puttees and wore a ruin of a white felt hat The ladies wore camp coats and broad trimmed black felt hats. The newspaper man him. self was huddled in a blanket, for the night was chilly All around them for miles stretched a sea of mesquite, looking green and ghostly and silent as Night drove his horses across the flat The only cheerful and civilized thing in that mesquite waste was the camp fire burning bravely under the sizzling coffee pot and frying pan.
 What DID the passengers on the Limited think as they looked through the plate glass windows of their lux urious coaches at that group of camp CTS squatting in the scrub? What would the newspaper man himself have thought a year ago if his Fate had spoken from the lap of the gods and told him that he would leave the restaurants and theatres and apart ment houses and street cars of the city and come here and fry eggs and be happy in this waste place about one hundred yards from the Mexican bor- der?
 And he WAS happy that evening. Never did a supper taste as good be- fore as that one eaten under stars that shone brighter and clearer ana finer than any lamp the cunning hand of restaurant man ever fastened to the gilded dome of his grill or dining hall The red sand under foot. was as clean as a tiled floor and there was a charm in the silence and the loneliness and the "far-awayness" of the place that held him in the hollow of it's hand.
 It had never occurred to him before that any one could eat with any com fort or satisfaction in the middle of patch of mesquite out in that desert place that looked so flat and barren and uninviting in daylight. But the coffee pot and the canteen took the place of spring or brook. and the white moonbeams transformed the mesquite, and the desert air was as pure as wine. and there was a wild, desolate, untroubled, untrampled charm about the place that made the repast a princely affair.
 The newspaper man does not know WHY this thing was so, nor does he trouble himself to explain or analyZe it. He only knows that it WAS So and that he was very happy and very hungry, and also very sorry because certain of his old friends back home were not there to share his good for tune.
 No cabaret singer ever penetrated this far to spoil a pilgrims meal with a rag time song. No wild laughter or music or glittering lights or merry sound of dance here. it is true, but neither had tears ever been shed or hearts broken out under the silent shadows of the mesquite. Solitude reigns here. and starlight and sand.
 
 Not even the chirp of cricket or the croak of a frog or birdsong. Just the stiffness and the shadows all about you and the rest of the world a thousand miles away.
 That was the fine thing about II. The Pullman passengers would doubt ! less laugh if they read this, and the newspaper mans old friends, too. But let them. What do they know or un- derstand? They never ate fried quail and scrambled eggs and bacon and apple pie under the mesquite and the stars and then watched the camp fire die like strong man who has fought his fight and done his work and Is ready and glad to go.
 W. o. Jennings and wife motored to Wilcox from Pearce. Wednesday. They