CHAPTER I

THE TRAIN STOPS

"I don't see why they had to build their old railroad down in the
bottom of this river bed." With deft fingers Alice Marcum caught back
a wind-tossed whisp of hair. "It's like travelling through a trough."

"Line of the least resistance," answered her companion as he rested an
arm upon the polished brass guard rail of the observation car. "This
river bed, running east and west, saved them millions in bridges."

The girl's eyes sought the sky-line of the bench that rose on both
sides of the mile-wide valley through which the track of the great
transcontinental railroad wound like a yellow serpent.

"It's level up there. Why couldn't they have built it along the edge?"

The man smiled: "And bridged all those ravines!" he pointed to gaps and
notches in the level sky-line where the mouths of creek beds and
coulees flashed glimpses of far mountains. "Each one of those ravines
would have meant a trestle and trestles run into big money."

"And so they built the railroad down here in this ditch where people
have to sit and swelter and look at their old shiny rails and scraggly
green bushes and dirt walls, while up there only a half a mile away the