Queen of the Lincoln Highway

AS THE TRAIN neared the little station of ________the conductor pulled the bell cord, the engine gave three toots with the whistle and the train soon came to a halt. The porter had taken the hand baggage so Madge was soon down the steps and the train again on its way. Had she rode for less than an hour she would have again been in the same town as her husband, but biting her lips to keep back the tears that would persist on coming, she helped the children to a seat inside the shack which answered the purpose of a waiting room. A Jap(anese) lady and her two children peeped with curious gaze at the trio. She was the wife of the head of the section gang, there was no station agent and time hung heavy while waiting for someone to come from the ranch to take her to her new house.

Picked the few red blossoms that grew on the dessert. For miles stretched the dessert, her eyes wandered again and again to the smoke from the smelter which marked the mining camp. Was her husband thinking of her and how long would it take for him to see that she was right. Would he be too stubborn to come for her. He had often said he would never run after any woman if she left him. Talk is cheap, perhaps he would find it different when forced to face real facts. Goodness knows it is hard for a woman to get along in this world who had two small children, [harder] than what Madge thought it would be when she first started out. She knew she would never have had the courage to face the world alone if she had known. Looking through her field glass up the road she perceived a faint cloud of dust. Surely that was some one coming with a team. She called the children and began to carry her grips to the roadside, placing the glasses again to her eyes. The object seemed to be stopped, so slow was their progress. Madge knew how the dessert deceives the eye and she again sat down. Lifting her glasses from time to time to view the approaching team and thus across the dessert to the smelter smoke outlined against the mountains across the valley.

The team drew up. A kindly faced man jumped to the ground and, taking it for granted who Madge was, he introduced himself as the ranch foreman and put Madge and the children into a large wagon drawn by one mule and one horse, explaining that the team he usually drove had been sent to the smelter town for the weekly mail, hoped Madge would be comfortable. The team started and for a while Madge thought she would wait for her companion to start the conversation so they jogged along in silence, the foreman's thoughts seemed far away for he seemed not to hear when Madge finally asked about the children, her duties and, last of all, if they could see the smelter smoke from the ranch.

His children had grown up on the ranch, their mother had died four years before, the girl was ten and the boy eight. They went to school in the mining camp but stayed on the ranch through the summer. They had a good school there but the other children who attended had learned so much of the worldly ways because of the life they had led, their parents drifting from one camp to the other only staying long enough to save a little money to pay the train fare to the next place which boomed for a spell, that his children would be better off at home with someone to teach them. This was her work in the winter time and in summer, she was to superintend a Jap(anese) cook, manage the house. Yes, they could see the smelter smoke by the aid of glasses on a clear day. He again lapsed into silence until the ranch house appeared in the distance.

"Don't think it's a saloon," laughed the foreman. "When I came here I had the company move an old store from a neighboring town to make a home for my family. Lumber is high in these parts so it was cheaper to move this than build a new one. The men who own the ranch are among the richest in Nevada, but everything has to go through so much red tape, that we do not get many improvements. Everything is system and we are supposed to economize."

The house was exactly like the many saloon one sees in every little town in Nevada. At one side was a row of green willows. The foreman explained that this was the irrigating ditch with which they watered their alphapha, the willows were planted for the sake of something green to look at.

The spots of green in the distance to right and left were homesteaders who had found rich ground for alphapha now that the irrigation system enabled them to water the thirsty ground.

The foreman's children ran to open the gate and scrambled into the back of the wagon. They soon began to ask questions of Madge until she was glad once inside the house and into a room by herself. She put her own children on the bed for a nap and then went out to investigate her house. The house had one large room, small rooms, a dining room and kitchen. The foreman and the boy occupied one and the girl another of the small rooms. Her room was the large one and contained two sanitary couches. It was dirty and shabby but could be made comfortable. The hired men only came into the dining room for their meals and slept in a bank house. Pigs and sheep were loose and often came up on the kitchen porch. At one side was a log house covered with straw and mud which was used for a storehouse. The company bought everything by cases, so it was filled with many kinds of canned goods, dried fruit and sacks of flour and sugar, also a barrel of unground coffee.

The Jap(anese) was preparing the evening meal and Madge went to assist. His cooking was good and he was very clean, but Madge took note of the waste that went into the pig bucket. As it was not yet harvest time there were only six men on the ranch. For them the Jap(anese) had roasted a quarter of mutton, a large pot of potatoes, another of canned peas and a large pan of bread pudding. All this was scraped into the pig bucket as soon as the meal was over.