



Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
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[Illustration: J. D. Gillilan (signature)]




TRAIL TALES

BY

JAMES DAVID GILLILAN

THE ABINGDON PRESS

NEW YORK--CINCINNATI




Copyright, 1915, by

JAMES DAVID GILLILAN




  DEDICATED AFFECTIONATELY
  TO MY MOTHER,
  TO MY WIFE;
  LIKEWISE TO
  THE PREACHERS OF
  UTAH MISSION
  AND
  IDAHO ANNUAL CONFERENCE




CONTENTS

  PREFACE                                                            9
  GOD'S MINISTER                                                    11
  THE WESTERN TRAIL                                                 13
  THE LONG TRAIL                                                    19
  THE DESERT                                                        31
  SAGEBRUSH                                                         39
  THE IRON TRAIL                                                    47
      A Railroad Saint in Idaho                                     49
      An Unusual Kindness                                           59
  INDIANS OF THE TRAIL                                              63
      Introductory Words                                            65
      Pocatello, the Chief                                          67
      The Babyless Mother                                           72
      Mary Muskrat                                                  76
      Bad Ben                                                       79
      A Three-Cornered Sermon                                       82
      Three Years After                                             87
      Chief Joseph and His Lost Wallowa                             92
      The White Man's Book                                          96
  LIGHTS AND SIDELIGHTS                                             99
  THE STAGECOACH                                                   107
  AMONG THE HILLS                                                  117
      The Mother Deer                                              119
      The Shepherd                                                 121
      The Feathered Drummer                                        122
  MORMONDOM                                                        123
      The Trail of the Mormon                                      125
      Some Mormon Beliefs                                          131
      Weber Tom, Ute Polygamist                                    138
      Polygamy of To-Day                                           145
  GREAT SALT LAKE                                                  149
  ARGONAUT SAM'S TALE                                              157
  THE WRAITH OF THE BLIZZARD                                       167
  THE GREAT NORTHWEST                                              175




ILLUSTRATIONS

  J. D. Gillilan                                        _Frontispiece_
  Chief Joseph, Nez Perce Indian                                    64
  Wallowa Lake                                                      94
  End of the Trail                                                 183




PREFACE

In his young manhood the writer of these sketches came up into this
realm of widest vision, clearest skies, sweetest waters, and happiest
people to engraft the green twig of his life upon the activities of
the mountaineers of the thrilling West.

At that time the vast plains and the barren valleys were silvered over
with the ubiquitous sage through which crept lazily and aimlessly the
many unharnessed arroyo-making streams waiting only the appearance of
their master, man. Under his scientific, skilled, and economic
guidance these wild waters, lassoed, tamed, and set to work, taking
the place of clouds where there are none, were soon to cause the gray
garden of nature to become goldened by the well-nigh illimitable acres
of grain and other home-making products.

The West has an abundant variety of life of a sort most intensely
human. Life, always so earnest in Anglo-Saxon lands, seems to have
accentuated individuality here in a wondrous and contagious degree.

These few stories, culled from the repertoire of an active life of
more than thirty years, are samples of personal experiences, and are
taken almost at random from mining camp, frontier town and settlement,
public and private life.

As a minister the writer has had wide and varied opportunities in all
the Northwest, but more especially in Utah, Oregon, and Idaho. Many a
man much more modest has far excelled him in life experiences, but
some of them have never told.

This little handful of goldenrod is affectionately dedicated to them
of the Trails.

                                                           THE AUTHOR.




GOD'S MINISTER

                 _Dedicated to the Mountain Ministers_

           As terrace upon terrace
           Rise the mountains o'er the humbler hills
           And stretch away to dizzy heights
           To meet heaven's own pure blue;
           From thence to steal those soft and filmy clouds
           With which to wrap their heads and shoulders--
                   Bare of other cloak--
           Transforming them to rains and snows
           To bless this elsewise desert world:

           So, he who stands God's minister '<DW41> men,
           High reaches out above all earthly things
           And comes in contact with the thoughts of God;
           Conveys them down in blessings to mankind--
                   Richest of blessings,
                   Holiest fruit of heaven--
           Plucked fresh from off the Tree of Life
           That springs hard by the Lamb's white throne,
           And bears the plenteous leaves which grow
                   To heal the wounded nations.

THE WESTERN TRAIL

                  And step by step since time began
                  I see the steady gain of man.
                                        --Whittier.




THE WESTERN TRAIL


"An overland highway to the Western sea" was the thought variously
expressed by many men in both public and private life among the
French, English, and Americans from very early times. In 1659 Pierre
Radisson and a companion, by way of the Great Lakes, Fox, and
"Ouisconsing" Rivers, discovered the "east fork" of the "Great River"
and crossed to the "west fork," up which they went into what is now
the Dakotas, only to find it going still "interminably westward."

In 1766 Carver, an Englishman, went by the same route up the "east
fork" to Saint Anthony Falls; thence he traveled to Canada, to learn
from the Assiniboin Indians the existence of the "Shining Mountains"
and that beyond them was the "Oregan," which went to the salt sea.

As early as 1783 Thomas Jefferson wrote to George Rogers Clark to tell
him he understood the English had subscribed a very large sum of
money for exploration of the country west of the Mississippi, and as
far as California. He even expressed himself as being desirous of
forming a party of Americans to make the trip.

Twenty years later, under the direction of _President_ Thomas
Jefferson, General Clark was made a member of the Lewis and Clark
Expedition, which went up the "great river" and ultimately crossed
through Montana and Idaho to the Columbia (Oregan?) and the "salt
sea."

Zebulon Pike was turned back by the imperious Rocky Mountains in 1806.
A few years later Captain Bonneville braved the plains, the plateaus,
the mountain passes, and the deserts, and saw the Columbia. Then
continuous migrations finally fixed the overland highway known from
ocean to ocean as the Oregon Trail.

The Mormons followed this national road when they trekked to the
valley of Salt Lake in 1847--a dolorous path to many.

Because the Oregon Trail was nature's way, man and commerce made it
their way. Road sites are not like city sites--made to order; they are
discovered. For that reason the pioneer railway transcontinental also
followed this trail. The Union Pacific marks with iron what so many of
the emigrants marked with their tears and their graves. From the mouth
of the Platte to the heart of the Rocky Mountains and beyond is a
continuous cemetery of nameless tombs.

The next few pages will give some sketches of fact depicting scenes of
sunlight and shadow that fell on this highway in days not so very long
agone.




THE LONG TRAIL

              Those mighty pyramids of stone
                That wedge-like pierce the desert airs,
              When nearer seen and better known
                Are but gigantic flights of stairs.
                                        --_Longfellow_.




THE LONG TRAIL


The Old Overland Trail from the Missouri River to the Willamette is a
distance of nearly two thousand miles. Before Jason Lee and Marcus
Whitman sanctioned its use for the migrating myriads of Americans
seeking the shores of the sunset sea, trappers and adventurers, good
and bad, had mapped out a general route over the wind-whipped passes,
where the storm stands sentinel and guards the granite ways among the
rough Rocky Mountains. They had followed the falls-filled Snake and
the calmer Columbia, which plow for a thousand miles or more among
basaltic bastions buttressing the mountain sides, or through the lava
lands where cavernous chasms yawn and abysmal depths echo back the
sullen roar of the raging rapids.

In the early forties of the nineteenth century restless spirits
from Missouri and eastward began to filter through the fingertips
of the beckoning mountains of the West and locate in the land where
storms seldom come and where the extremes of heat and cold are
unknown--Willamette Valley, Oregon.

In these early days, a farmer, whom we shall name Johnson, with wife
and son, hoping to better conditions and prolong life, thus sought the
goal toward the setting sun. Starting when the sturdy spring was
enlivening all nature, they left the malarial marshes of the
Mississippi Valley, where quinine and whisky for "fevernagur" were to
be had at every crossroads store, and in a couple of weeks found
themselves west of the muddy Missouri, where the herds of humped bison
grazed as yet unafraid among the rolling, well-wooded hills of eastern
Kansas.

Barring a few common hindrances, they went well and reached the higher
and hotter plains in midsummer; they were out of the sight of hills
and trees--just one weary, eternal, unchangeable vista day after day.
Mrs. Johnson had not been well, and after a few weeks that promised
more for the future than they fulfilled, she began gradually to lose
strength.

But she was made of the uncomplaining material pioneers are wrought
of, the ones who so lived, loved, and labored that the hard-earned
sweets of civilization grew to highest perfection about their graves,
and proved the most enduring monument to their memory. She never
murmured other than to ask occasionally: "Father, how much farther?
Isn't it a wonderfully long way to Oregon?"

"Just over that next range of hills, I think, from what the trappers
told me," was the reply, after they had come to the toes of the
foothills that terminate the long-lying limbs of the giant Rockies.
But he did not know the stealth of the mountains nor the fantastic
pranks the canyony ranges can play upon the stranger. A snowy-haired
peak, brother to Father Time, wearing a fringe of evergreens for his
neckruff, would play hide-and-seek with them for days, dodging behind
this eminence and hiding away back of that hill, only to reappear
apparently as far off as ever, and sometimes in a different direction
from where he last seemed to be.

After a few more days: "Father, how many more miles do you think?"

"O, not many now, I am sure!" cheerily and optimistically would come
the answer.

As they climbed, and climbed, and climbed, the ripening service-berry,
blackened by weeks of attention by the unclouded sun, and the pine-hen
and the speckled beauties from the noisy trout-streams, added to their
comforts, and for a little while appeared to enliven the tired and
fading woman. A frosty night or two, a peak newly whitened with early
snow, put an invigorating thrill and pulse into the blood of the man
and the boy, but she crept just a little nearer to the camp fire of
evenings and found herself more and more languid in responding to the
call of the day that returned all too soon for her. At last, rolling
out on the Wahsatch side of the continental backbone, they encountered
very warm but shortening days, while the nights grew chillier. Having
passed to the north of Salt Lake by the trail so well and faithfully
marked by Mr. Ezra Meeker in recent years, they began to realize that
they were with the waters that flow to the west.

One evening, after the tin plates, iron forks and knives, and the
pewter spoons had been washed and returned to their box, and as they
were getting ready for their nightly rest, Mrs. Johnson said, wearily:
"Father, it just seems to me I would be glad if I never would waken
again. It seems I would enjoy never again hearing the everlasting
squeech, squeech of the wheels in the sand, and see the sun go down
day after day so red and so far away over those new mountains. O, I am
so tired!"

"Never mind, mother, we are not far from our new home now;" and moving
over to her side as she sat leaning against the wagon-tongue, the man
slipped his own tired arm about her shoulders and let her rest against
him, for he was indeed weary, and the trail _was_ wonderfully long.

The following morning he purposely lay still just a little longer than
was his custom, although he was most prudently desirous of making as
much speed as he could while the weather continued so good; he knew
the rains might soon set in and make travel over unmade roads much
worse than it already was.

When he arose he noiselessly crept away from her side and quietly
called the boy to go and bring up the horses and the cow, cautioning
him to take off the horse-bell and carry it so as not to arouse the
mother when he came to camp. Quietly as possible he made the fire and
prepared their breakfast of fare that was daily becoming scantier.
Then, when all was ready, he tiptoed through the sand to where she lay
under the spreading arms of a little desert juniper, such as are
occasionally found in the deserts, and where she had said the night
before she wished she could sleep forever. She looked so calm and
restful he hesitated to wake her; it seemed like robbery to take from
her one moment of the longed-for and hard-earned rest. Yet it was time
they were on their road, and the day was fine; so after a few minutes
he called, gently, "Mother, you're getting a nice rest, aren't you?"

She did not stir. He then stooped to kiss the languid lips--they were
cold. She was dead. They had been seeking a home by the shores of the
sunset sea; she had found the sunrise land.

It is a sad, solemn, and sacred thing to be with our dead, but to be
alone, hundreds of miles from the face of any friend, in such an hour,
is an experience few ever have to meet. Pioneer-like, the father scans
the horizon, locating all the prominent features of the landscape. He
makes a rude map, not forgetting the juniper. As best he can he
prepares the body for the burying. And such a burying! No lumber with
which to make even a rough box; nothing but their daily clothing and
nightly bedding was to be had. The unlined grave was more than usually
forbidding. The desert demon had trailed that brave body and was now
swallowing it up. They made the grave by the juniper where she last
slept, and, sorrowing, the father and the son went on, firm in the
resolve that the loved one should not always lie in a desert grave.

Forty years later a man past middle-age, riding a horse and leading
another, to whose packsaddle was fastened a box, went slowly along
that old trail in Southern Idaho, now almost obliterated by
many-footed Progress. He was scanning the hills and consulting a piece
of age-yellowed paper, broken at all its ancient creases. It was the
son obeying the dying request of the old father--going to find, if
possible, the spot where the tired mother went to sleep so long ago,
and bring all that remained to rest by his side.

It was no easy task. Fertile fields, whose irrigated areas now
presented billowy breasts of ripening grain; mighty ditches like
younger and better-behaved rivers; a railway following the general
direction of the old trail; ranch-houses and fat haystacks indenting
the sky-line once so bare of all except clumps of sagebrush--these all
conspired to make the task next to impossible.

Man may scratch the hillsides, but cannot mar the majesty of the
mountains; they were unchanged. The map he carried was the one his
father made on the spot more than a generation before. It had been
well made and the specifications were minute. After a long while,
carefully measuring and comparing, he found the spot to him so sacred.
The juniper tree, so rare in that section, had not been disturbed by
the new owner of the land, and as the precious burden, secured at
last, was borne away, it still stood on guard--as if lonely now. Like
father, like son. Both were faithfully bound by the strongest tie in
the universe--love!




THE DESERT

             Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
             And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
                                               --_Gray_.

           As geographers, Sosius, crowd into the edges of
           their maps parts of the world which they do not
           know about, adding notes in the margin to the
           effect that beyond this lies nothing but sandy
           deserts full of wild beasts, and unapproachable
           bogs.
                                             --_Plutarch_.




THE DESERT


Much of the Old Overland Trail lay across the "Great American Desert,"
as it was named in the earlier geographies. Irrigation and progressive
energy have made these wastes in many instances literally to "blossom
as the rose"; but until that was done these stretches were weary
enough.

He who knows only the desert of the geography naturally conceives it
an absolutely forsaken and empty region where nothing but dust-storms
are born unattended and die "without benefit of the clergy." But the
desert has character and is as variable as many another creature.


THE SAND STORM


An experience in an actual sand storm is food upon which the
reminiscent may ruminate many a day, being much more pleasant in
memory than in the making. First come the scurrying outriders, lithe
and limber whisking gusts, dancing and whirling like Moslem
dervishes, coyly brushing the traveler or boldly flinging fierce
fistfuls of dirt into his eyes; then off with a swish of invisible
skirts--vanishing possibly in the same direction whence they came.
They go leaving him wiping his astonished eyes disgustedly, for the
act was so sudden and tragic as to excite tears. Before he is aware of
it other and stronger gusts duplicate the dastardly deed of the first
wingless wizard of the plains, and the hapless voyager is left
gasping. Almost immediately there are to be seen the regular "desert
devils," as they are called, bringing a dozen or more whirling columns
of yellow silt rapidly through the air, each pirouetting on one foot,
assuming meanwhile all sorts of fantastic shapes.

Now for the fierce onset. Like blasts of a blizzard, the shrapnel of
the desert is hurled into eyes, face, ears, and nostrils; little
rivers pour down the back and fill every discoverable wrinkle and
cranny of the clothing with their gritty load.

If in summer, buttoning the clothing is suffocation, and the
perspiration soon makes one a mass of grime; if in winter, it is not
so unbearable, for a comfortable fencing can be made against the sand
and the cold.

The whole landscape is obliterated by and by, and the trails are so
often drift-filled that unless one is himself accustomed to such
methods of travel or has an experienced plainsman as his driver and
guide, there is danger of becoming lost, or so out of the way that
night may overtake him and compel a waterless camp for himself and
team.


TWILIGHT AND DAWN


But to see the morning slip off its night clothes and step out into
daylight, or watch day don her night-wraps and snuggle down into
twilight on the quiet sand-ocean! In summer it is a scene of splendor,
often coming after a day or an evening of sandy wrath.

At early dawn, lining the eastern horizon, are the soft pencils of
bashful day over-topping the jagged sawteeth of the yet sleeping
mountains, fifty or more miles away. A faint hinting of the lightening
of the sky only deepens the blackness of the snow-streaked peaks. The
cowardly coyote's yelp comes more and more faintly, the burrowing
owl's "to-whit, to-whoo" falls dying on the moveless air, and the
white sparrow of the sagebrush starts up as if to catch the early worm
he is almost sure not to find. The loping jack rabbit slips softly to
his greasewood shelter and the prairie dog bounces barking from his
snake-infested haunt, noisily preparing for his day's digging and
foraging.

The stubborn mountains begin to let the sun's forerunning rays glide
between them; the sky, now old gold, is fast transforming into
kaleidoscopic crimsons and other reds, while the swift arms of the
day-painter are reaching from between the peaks of the precipitous
crags and dyeing the scales of the mackerel sky with hues and tints
the rainbow would covet.

In the opposite direction a morning mirage inverts an image of a
stretch of trees along the far-away river and blends them top to
top till they seem greenish-black columns supporting the dun clouds
of the west, while the belated moon peers through the half-unreal
corridors.


SUNSET


The sunset is far more gorgeous; it often reaches grandeur. Let it be
a winter evening. A suggestion of storm has been playing threats. The
western hills have reached up their time-toughened arms and carried
the burnt-out lantern of day to bed, tucking him away in gold-lace
tapestry and rose-tinted down. Then the blue, black, and brown clouds
change quickly to purple, pink, and red by turns, and the opaline sky
itself forms a background for the dissolving community of interlacing
filaments of priceless filigree, till in time too full of interest to
compute by measure, the whole heavens are aflame with a riotous orgy
of color, a prodigality of shifting scene, making one think of the
descriptions essayed by the writer of the Apocalypse.

We think of Moses who wished to see God "face to face," but was told
he would be permitted to behold only the "dying away of his glory." No
wonder the man who was forty years in the wilderness before that grand
exode, and forty more through the unsurveyed deserts, was enabled to
write the majestic prose-poems that have lived unaltered through all
these thousands of critical years! He was in the region where
inspiration is dispensed with hands of infinite wealth. God is the
dispenser.




SAGEBRUSH

             This is the forest primeval.--_Longfellow_.

       The continuous woods where rolls the Oregon.--_Bryant_.




SAGEBRUSH


Frequently within these pages mention has been made of the commonest
of all our native plants on the Trail--sagebrush. Botanically, it is,
_Artemisia tridentata_. The new Standard Dictionary defines sagebrush
as "any one of the various shrubby species of Artemisia, of the aster
family, growing on the elevated plains of the Western United States,
especially _Artemisia tridentata_, very abundant from Montana to
Colorado and westward." The leaf ends in three points; hence the
adjective tridentata--the three-toothed artemisia.

There are several varieties of sagebrush, and a person not well
acquainted with the desert might easily mistake one for the other.
There are the white sage, a good forage plant for sheep, and the
yellow sage, which, when properly taken, can be made useful for
cattle. Then there is the common variety, the sort named above. This
is not to be mistaken for the prickly greasewood which infests the
more alkaline regions; nor the rabbit-brush with its blossom so like
the goldenrod, but with a very disagreeable odor. No man who knows
will ever buy land where the greasewood grows thickly; it is
unproductive because of the large percentage of alkali. But the
ancient-looking sage is a pretty sure indication of fertility of soil.
Mother Nature is sometimes hard pushed to find dresses for all her
poorer areas; of course the better portions of the land east or west,
north or south, care for their clothes better than do these arid
stretches and the clothing is a richer vegetation.

This ever-gray, little hunger-pinched pygmy among trees looks about as
much like an oak as does a diminutive monkey like a grown man.

A peculiarity of this individual in treedom is that it keeps its
ash- leaf until it has a new set to put on in the spring, so
that all winter long it presents the same color as it does in the
summertime. Its bark is loose and shaggy, being shed rapidly, and
gives one the thought of the old grape vine; hanging in bunches, the
bole has always a ragged appearance. It is truly the dry-land plant,
always found where the alkali or water is not too abundant; but in
favored spots where there is only a little dampness and not too much
fierceness of the summer heat it grows eight or ten feet high, making
a body large enough for fence posts. This is extraordinary, for
usually these Liliputian forests do not attain a height of more than
four feet, and often much less. So diminutive are these solemn woods
that the ordinary gang-plow can walk right through them, turning the
shrubbery under like tall grass, although every tree is perfect, just
like the dwarf creations produced by the resourceful Japanese.

The seed of this tiny tree grows on stiff, upright filaments like the
broom-corn straws. These stems are very bitter and are often used by
the range-riders on long rides or roundups to excite the flow of
saliva when thirst overtakes them too far from water. Because of its
bitterness it is often called wormwood.

Not many uses have been found for the wood of these primeval forests.
In many sections the people have nothing but sagebrush for firewood.
The whole tree is used, special stoves, or heaters, being made to
accommodate the whole plant. It is gathered in the following manner:
Two immense T-rails of railroad iron are laid side by side, one
inverted, and securely fastened together; to the ends of these are
hitched two teams of horses or mules, which pulling parallel to each
other, are driven into the standing fairy forests and the swaths of
fallen timber show the track of this unnatural storm. Its roots have
such slight hold on the soil that it easily falls. Wagons and
pitchforks follow, and the whole of the felling is hauled untrimmed to
the home for hand-axing if too large; and it is all burned, top and
root. There is so much vegetable oil in this queer plant that it makes
a fine and very quick fire, green or dry.

After a summer rain there is no aromatic perfume surpassing that of
the odor of sagebrush filling the newly washed air. The mountaineer
who has had to make a trip East gladly opens his window, as his train
pushes back into the habitat of these aromatic shrubs, to get an
early whiff of the health-laden, sage-sweetened atmosphere of the
beloved Westland and homeland.




THE IRON TRAIL

            There are hermit souls that live withdrawn
              In their houses of self-content;
            There are souls like stars that dwell apart
              In their fellowless firmament.
            There are pioneer souls that blaze their paths
              Where highways never ran.
            But, let me live by the side of the road
              And be a friend to man.
                                        --Sam Walter Foss.




A RAILROAD SAINT IN IDAHO


The "railroad saint" was a locomotive engineer. His life was ever an
open book, yet while careful and almost severe in his personal
religious habits, he did not criticize the manners of his associates.
He simply let his well kept searchlight shine.

Though born in Ohio, his boy life was spent mainly in Nebraska, when
it was just emerging from the ragged swaddlings of rough frontierdom;
and during his young manhood he lived in Wyoming, at the time when men
"carried the law in their hip-pockets," as he graphically expressed
it.

Early becoming an employee of the Union Pacific, he was a permanent
portion of its westward intermountain extension, and he did his life's
work among the scenic cliffs and clefts of the picturesque crags and
corrugated canyons of the wrinkled ridges in the Rocky and the Wahsatch
ranges. Opportunities for literary education were very limited to one
so engaged, and little more than what was absolutely necessary to the
railmen did he receive. But he was not ignorant by any means. In later
years he read extendedly and with careful discrimination. He had a
poet's soul, but was not visionary.

His mother had been a careful and sensible Christian. The indelible
impress she left upon him was like to that given by Jochebed to her
son Moses. He never wholly escaped from her hallowed influence,
although he descended into vicious living and became a notorious and
blatant blasphemer, sceptic, and drunkard.

Once when attending a national convention of railway engineers in an
Eastern city he noticed a little flower boy vainly attempting to
dispose of his roses. Our engineer (who always had a feeling for the
"other fellow") paid the lad for all he had left and directed him to
carry them to the hotel where the delegates were stopping, and give
them to the ladies in the parlor. This act was repeated on successive
days. It attracted attention finally, and one of the delegates asked
him if he were a Christian. Characteristically he blurted out: "Do
you see anything about me that indicates it? If so, I will take it off
at once. Why do you ask such a question?"

"Because," said the questioner, "your kindness to that pale-faced
little flower boy makes people think you are."

"Nothing at all queer about that," was the quick reply. "Common
humanity should dictate such deeds. If I myself wanted a favor, I'd
not go to any Christian for it; I'd rather tackle a bartender or a
gambler."

"Well, Dr. T----, of the Methodist Church, has heard of you," remarked
his questioner, "and he says he would like to meet you for an hour or
so before you leave the city."

"But I've no desire to meet any preacher, though if it will afford the
gentleman any pleasure, I will gladly do it for that reason and no
other. What do you suppose he wants?"

The intermediary arranged a time of meeting, and after introducing the
men, left the "eagle eye" in the pleasant study of the minister, a
pastor of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. After a few minutes
of easy conversation, the minister abruptly cut all Gordian knots and
said: "Mr.----, are you a Christian?"

"No, sir, not so you can notice it."

"Why are you not?"

"Why should I be?"

"It gives to every one who embraces true religion a better, broader,
worthier view and conception of life."

"Wherein, mister?"

"It puts purpose into his life and interprets the end to which he is
tending."

Then came up from the keen intellect-quiver of our Rocky Mountain
engineman all the stock phrases, replies, and arguments of Voltaire,
Rousseau, Ingersoll, and others whose writings he knew perfectly.

With Christian and cultivated patience the minister listened and then
said with captivating and sympathetic tenderness: "But, my dear sir,
that is all speculation on the part of those scholarly and eloquent
men whom you quote so accurately. They know no better. The religion of
Jesus is not speculation; it is practical knowledge. Would not you,
sir, like to know personally as to its truth?"

"Yes, but how can I?"

His foot had been taken in the snare of the wise trapper.

Said the preacher: "You can; and this is the way. As you leave this
city for your return to the West, get a cheap New Testament; indeed,
here is a copy; please accept it. Tear it in two in the middle,
retaining only the four Gospels--Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Read
them; you will by yourself and by this means find the way to perfect
knowledge."

He of the throttle, hungry for the deepest knowledge, did as directed
and advised.

Back to his cab and engine he went, under the deepest conviction. Yet
he declared that he needed no extraneous assistance to be as good as
any Christian; Jesus he considered a superfluity, and said so. The
negative influences of the atheistic authors yet warped him. He said:
"I dare any of you to watch me. I can and will be as upright as any
Christian on earth." But after a short time of exemplary conduct, he
would wake up some morning only to discover to his hearty disgust that
he had been on an extended period of dissipation. Later he would
attempt another straightening-up and