BY FRANCES GILCHRIST WOOD
From Pictorial Review
The old mail-sled running between Haney and Le Beau, in the days when Dakota was
still a Territory, was nearing the end of its hundred-mile route.
It was a desolate country in those days; geographers still described it as The Great
American Desert, and in looks it deserved the title. Never was there anything so
lonesome as that endless stretch of snow reaching across the world until it cut into a cold
grey sky, excepting the same desert burned to a brown tinder by the hot wind of summer.
Nothing but sky and plain and its voice, the wind, unless you might count a lonely sod
shack blocked against the horizon, miles away from a neighbour, miles from anywhere,
its red-curtained square of window glowing through the early twilight.
There were three men in the sled; Dan, the mail-carrier, crusty, belligerently Western, the
self-elected guardian of every one on his route; Hillas, a younger man, hardly more than a
boy, living on his pre-emption claim near the upper reaches of the stage line; the third a
stranger from that part of the country vaguely defined as "the East." He was travelling,
had given him name as Smith, and was as inquisitive about the country as he was reticent
about his business there. Dan plainly disapproved of him.
They had driven the last cold miles in silence when the stage-driver turned to his
neighbour. "Letter didn't say anything about coming out in the spring to look over the
country, did it?"
Hillas shook his head. "It was like all the rest, Dan. Don't want to build a railroad at all
until the country's settled."
"God! Can't they see the other side of it? What it means to the folks already here to wait
for it?"
The stranger thrust a suddenly interested profile above the handsome collar of his fur
coat. He looked out over the waste of snow.
"You say there's no timber here?"
Dan maintained unfriendly silence and Hillas answered: "Nothing but scrub on the banks
of the creeks. Years of prairie fires have burned out the trees, we think."
