With this man had
come to Barker's his daughter Sarah, commonly known as "Sally," a
handsome girl, with a straight, lithe figure, fine features, reddish
auburn hair, and dark-blue eyes. It is but fair to say that even the
"toughs" of a place like Barker's show some respect for the other sex,
and Miss Sally's case was no exception to the rule. The male population
admired her; they said she "put on heaps of style"; but none of them
had seemed to make any progress in her good graces.
On a pleasant afternoon just after the track had been laid some miles
west of Barker's, and construction trains were running with some
regularity to and from the end thereof, Sinclair sat on the rude
veranda of the engineers' quarters, smoking his well-colored meerschaum
and looking at the sunset. The atmosphere had been so clear during the
day that glimpses were had of Long's and Pike's peaks, and as the young
engineer gazed at the gorgeous cloud display he was thinking of the
miners' quaint and pathetic idea that the dead "go over the Range."
"Nice-looking, ain't it, Major?" asked a voice at his elbow, and he
turned to see one of the contractors' officials taking a seat near him.
"More than nice-looking to my mind, Sam," he replied. "What is the news
to-day?"
"Nothin' much. There's a sight of talk about the doin's of them faro
an' keno sharps. The boys is gettin' kind o' riled, fur they allow the
game ain't on the square wuth a cent. Some of 'em down to the tie-camp
wuz a-talkin' about a vigilance committee, an' I wouldn't be surprised
ef they meant business. Hev yer heard about the young feller that come
in a week ago from Laramie an' set up a new faro-bank?"
"No. What about him?"
"Wa'al, yer see he's a feller thet's got a lot of sand an' ain't
afeared of nobody, an' he's allowed to hev the deal to his place on the
square every time. Accord-in' to my idee, gamblin's about the wust
racket a feller kin work, but it takes all sorts of men to make a
world, an' ef the boys is bound to hev a game, I cal-kilate they'd like
to patronize his bank. Thet's made the old crowd mighty mad an' they're
a-talkin' about puttin' up a job of cheatin' on him an' then stringin'
him up. Besides, I kind o' think there's some cussed jealousy on
another lay as comes in. Yer see the young feller--Cyrus Foster's his
name--is sweet on thet gal of Jeff Johnson's. Jeff wuz to Laramie
before he come here, an' Foster knowed Sally up thar. I allow he moved
here to see her. Hello! Ef thar they ain't a-coming now."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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