The Argosy — page 334: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Across the Plains. 315 and discomfort. But though we were shut up together in that old stage and from all the world; isolated on those vast, dreary plains of Western Kansas, there was a yh distance between these men and me. Fach one had made his ‘“ pile,” and was going home to the States to share it with wife or child, or relative; but none of them felt the hot, fierce impatience—the wild, sick, unutterable longing—which held pos- session of me through those days and nights. For two years I had kept it in check with strong will and iron purpose, but now the fire burned and the thirst consumed me. And still the mules dragged, and toiled, » and panted over the desert plains; but their faces were set—oh, how I blessed God in my heart-—their faces were set to the eastward. Mother and little Flossie! What were they doing that night, I won- dered, in that little bit of a brown nest of a cottage in that old farming district on the Massachusetts Bay, not many miles from Boston ? That low, century-old homestead with its gambrel roof was the best we could afford after father died ; and we were thankful enough to be able to keep up that. At the time my father died I was a schoolboy. And there was nothing for it but to send for me home that I might take up the ebm on the farm which my father’s hand had dropped. They were struggling years that followed; struggling for food and | raiment and shelter. Expenses swallowed up everything: I was in- experienced in regard to the land. Mother was broken down; and Flossie, my one little sister, ‘witty the lights and shadows in the fice gold hair that gave her her household name—Flossie, with her sparkling eyes and her little peach-blossom of a face ; the soft, bright dimpled little thing, could do nothing but cling to usin her youth and helplessness. — How we weathered it through the years that followed I hardly know, with no arm but my boyish one to keep the wolf from the door. I worked at whatever my hand found to do with my might: but each year it grew harder and harder to keep our heads above water. About that time we began to hear rumours of the vast fortunes that lay sealed up among the mountains of Colorado. And one day— I remember it as though it were but yesterday—when I had worked harder than any man ever worked yet, there flashed into my mind the thought of Colorado. If I could only go off there and make a fortune as others were doing! Not a vast fortune: I did not care for that: I indulged no visions of wealth and luxury—but just a little sum that would take away the daily terror that was wearing into all our lives, and place mother and Flossie in comfort—ah, if I could do that ! The notion fixed itself in my brain. It gave me no peace night or day. At last, I broke ittothem; and so, by degrees they began to see the prospect with my own eyes. And—no matter about the time and | way—l started at length for Denver City, and went to work in the mines. GOGO CO im