The car in itself was in no way remarkable. A twelve-section and

drawing-room, mahogany-finish, wide-vestibule sleeper, done in cream

brown, hangings shading into Indian reds--a type of the Pullman car so

popular some years ago for transcontinental travel; neither too heavy

for the mountains nor too light for the pace across the plains.

There were many features added to the passenger schedule on the West

End the year Henry S. Brock and his friends took hold of the road, but

none made more stir than the new Number One, run then as a crack

passenger train, a strictly limited, vestibuled string, with barbers,

baths, grill rooms, and five-o'clock tea. In and out Number One was

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the finest train that crossed the Rockies, and bar nobody's.

It was October, with the Colorado travel almost entirely eastbound and

the California travel beginning, westbound, and the Lalla Rookh sleeper

being deadheaded to the coast on a special charter for an O. and O.

steamer party; at least, that was all the porter knew about its

destination, and he knew more than anyone else.

At McCloud, where the St. Louis connection is made, Number One sets out

a diner and picks up a Portland sleeper--so it happened that the Lalla

Rookh, hind car to McCloud, afterward lay ahead of the St. Louis car,

and the trainmen passed, as occasion required, through it--lighted down

the gloomy aisle by a single Pintsch burner, choked to an all-night

dimness.

But on the night of October 3d, which was a sloppy night in the

mountains, there was not a great deal to take anybody back through the

Lalla Rookh. Even the porter of the dead car deserted his official

corpse, and after Number One pulled out of Medicine Bend and stuck her

slim, aristocratic nose fairly into the big ranges the Lalla Rookh was

left as dead as a stringer to herself and her reflections--reflections

of brilliant aisles and staterooms inviting with softened lights, shed

on couples that resented intrusion; of sections bright with lovely

faces and decks ringing with talk and laughter; of ventilators singing

of sunshine within, and of night and stars and waste without--for the

Lalla Rookh carried only the best people, and after the overland voyage

on her tempered springs and her yielding cushions they felt an

affection for her. When the Lalla Rookh lived she lived; but to-night

she was dead.

This night the pretty car sped over the range a Cinderella deserted,

her linen stored and checked in her closets, her pillows bunked in her

seats, and her curtains folded in her uppers, save and except in one

single instance--Section Eleven, to conform to certain deeply held

ideas of the porter, Raz Brown, as to what might and might not

constitute a hoodoo, was made up. Raz Brown did not play much: he

could not and hold his job; but when he did play he played eleven

always whether it fell between seven, twenty-seven, or four,

forty-four. And whenever Raz Brown deadheaded a car through, he always

made up section eleven, and laid the hoodoo struggling but helpless

under the chilly linen sheets of the lower berth.




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