The train rattles out of New York, and crossing the Harlem, skirts that pretty little salt water river; as Miss Travenion settles herself lazily in her seat, with a graceful ease peculiar to her, for the girl has a curious blending of both style and beauty, giving her a patrician elegance of manner that makes gracious even the slight tendency to hauteur in her manner and voice.

The sun shines upon her face, and she turns it from the morning beams, and gazing towards the West, thinks of her father. Her eyes grow gentle, her mobile features expectant with hope, and tender with love; and Oliver Livingston, who is reading a New York journal, glances up from it, and noting Erma's face thinks, "She really does love me, dear girl, though she is so cold, which is much better form till we are regularly engaged," and decides to give her a chance to admit her affection to him formally before the end of their summer tour, for this prim gentleman actually adores the young lady he is looking at as much as his diminutive soul can love anything, except himself.

At present he does not know how small his soul is, but rather thinks it is large and noble and very magnanimous. He has had no occasion so far to test its dimensions, his life up to this time having been quite narrow; and though he has travelled, it has not brought much into his brain, save some strong, high church notions he has imported from Oxford, to which university this young gentleman had been sent to complete his education after Harvard; his mother having an idea it might get him into English society, and perhaps permit him to make a great European match. This was before Erma's father had made his million dollar settlement upon her; Mrs. Livingston having been one of the first of those pioneers from New York who passed over to England and replaced the social chains of the Mother Country upon her,—those her grandfather and other American patriots had fought to throw off, together with the political ones of George the Third, his Majesty of glorious memory.

Upon his return to New York, Mr. Ollie had signalized his advent by dragging his mother and sister to Saint Agnes's from their old pew at Grace Church, the ritual of that place not being sufficiently Puseyitic for his views; his father, the elder Livingston, who had no religion to mention save certain maxims of business and the rules of his club, being, fortunately for his son's high church movement, dead.

This performance of the heir of the house had made his mother think him a saint; as, indeed, to do the young man justice, he wished to be; and had Ollie Livingston elected to follow any profession, he would doubtless have turned to the ministry; but his million of dollars perhaps dulled his incentive for work, and after his return from England, the young man had done nothing; but as Ferdie had irreverently expressed it, "had done that nothing Grandly."

And why should he work? He had money enough to command any ordinary luxury of life. As for position, was he not a Livingston, and could he add additional honor to that old Knickerbocker name? thought his mother.

There was only one trouble in all their family affairs, and that was removed by the settlement Mr. Travenion had made upon Ollie's fiancÉe, for as such Mrs. Livingston already regarded Erma. In order to make the settlement upon his son, the elder Livingston had culled his best securities and most gilded collaterals; those left for the support of his widow and daughter, not being so stable, had depreciated in the last few years, and Mrs. Livingston's income had dwindled until it was not what she considered it should be for a lady of her station. Now, of course, if Ollie married a very rich wife, he could be very liberal to his mother and sister, and that point had been happily settled by the million-dollar settlement upon Miss Travenion.

It is some thought of this that is in Erma's mind once or twice in her first day's journey towards the West. The girl loves Mrs. Livingston, who had been a companion of Erma's mother, and had been very kind to the child even after her father's reverses, and had frequently visited Miss Hines' Academy in Gramercy Park, and had the little Erma, now wholly orphaned by her mother's death and father's absence, to her great house on Madison Square, where she had been regaled en princess and sent back to the boarding school made happy with good things to eat and presents that make children's hearts glad.

This, Miss Travenion does not forget, now that her father's settlements upon her have made her probably as great an heiress in her own right as any girl of her circle in Manhattan society.

This peculiar position of Mrs. Livingston had been pretty well known to Erma, and it seemed to compel her to make no protest when the widow had taken her from the seclusion of Miss Hines' Academy at the beginning of the winter and brought her out, with much blowing of social trumpets and flowers and fiddling at Mrs. Livingston's Madison Square mansion—and also had chaperoned her at Newport.

Therefore, she has rather grown to consider herself set apart for Oliver's wife, and as such has turned a deaf ear to the many men who, on slight encouragement, would be more than happy and more than ready to woo a young lady who has gorgeous beauty, a million of dollars of her own and a father of indefinite Western wealth, which, magnified by distance, has increased to such Monte Cristo proportions, that it has gained for her the title, among her set, of "Miss Dividends."

Besides any notion of gratitude to Mrs. Livingston, Erma knows that this match with Ollie is her father's wish. On one of his visits to New York, she had once hinted her desire to visit and live with him in the West, and had been promptly refused in terms as stern as Ralph Travenion could bring himself to use to his daughter, for whom he seemed to have a very tender love, and in doing so he had indicated that his wishes were that she fulfil the arrangement he had made with his old-time friend, the elder Livingston.

"Marry Oliver," he had said. "He is in your rank—the position to which you were born, Erma. Live in the East. The West is, perhaps, the best place to make money, but New York is par excellence the place to enjoy it. Some day—perhaps sooner than you expect, I shall join you here, and settle down to my old life as club man again," and Ralph Travenion looks towards the Unity Club, upon whose lists his name still stands, and of whose smoking-room he is still an habituÉ on his visits to Manhattan, rather longingly from his parlor in the Brevoort House, at which hotel he always stopped, in contradistinction to most of his comrades from the Plains, who are more apt to register at the Fifth Avenue or the Hoffman.

It was on one of these visits at the Brevoort that Erma had chanced to meet Mr. Lot Kruger, and circumstances compelling the same, had received introduction to him.

"Ha! a new convert to Zion!" the Westerner had cried out, looking rather curiously at the beautiful girl of nineteen, who had entered unannounced into Ralph Travenion's apartments.

But her father had simply said: "My daughter, Miss Erma, let me present Mr. Kruger, a business associate of mine," and had so dismissed the affair, though several times afterward the Westerner had chanced to be at Travenion's apartments when Erma called, and once or twice he had appeared at Miss Hines' Academy, bearer, as he said, of news from her father to Miss Travenion, to the amusement, astonishment and giggles of her fellow-pupils and the dismay of the schoolmistress, who thought Mr. Kruger a species of Western border ruffian or bandit.

However, as she sits and meditates, the thought that she is drawing nearer and nearer to her loved father, drives all else out of Erma Travenion's head, and she watches the wave-washed banks of the beautiful Hudson, and as they pass by says, "One more tree nearer papa—one more island nearer papa—one more town nearer papa," and later in the day, they having got off the New York Central, she murmurs "One more railroad nearer papa," and grows happier and happier as the cars bear her on.

So the day passes. Her companions have settled down to their journey, and are passing their time in cards or novel reading, and Miss Travenion has plenty of opportunity for reflection, for Ollie notices that the girl seems to wish to be left to herself, and only ventures occasional remarks when passing objects demand them.

Mr. Kruger, awed perhaps by the private car, which was much more of a rarity and luxury in 1871 than it is to-day, does not intrude upon the young lady or her party, though Erma notices when she gets off at the large stations for exercise that Lot's eyes seem to follow her about, as if he were interested in her for her father's sake.

Thus the night comes and goes, and during the next day, the 1st of October, the party pass through Chicago, just then waiting to be burned in order that it may become great.

So, running over the prairies two days and a few hours after leaving New York, they arrive at Council Bluffs, and take ferry across the Missouri River, no bridge at this time crossing that great but uncertain and shifting stream.

During this two days' journey from New York to the Missouri, a considerable change has taken place in the minds of some of the members of the party as to their proposed jaunt to the Rocky Mountains and beyond. This has chiefly been brought about by Mr. Ferdie, who, having purchased a book entitled "Facts About the Far West," has been regaling himself with the same, and devoting a considerable portion of his time explaining and elucidating the knowledge he thinks he has gained from it to Mrs. Livingston, producing a very distressing effect upon that plump lady's nervous system.

These "Facts About the West" consist chiefly of anecdotes of the border ruffian kind, descriptions of various atrocities, Indian massacres, Mormon outrages and vigilance committees, and are of such a very highly colored and blood-curdling description that Mr. Chauncey himself remarks, as he finishes the volume: "If these are facts about the West, I think the fiction will be too rich for my blood!" Though half-believing the same, this young gentleman imagines he has acquired in his two days between New York and Council Bluffs, considerable knowledge of the manners of the Western frontiersman, border-ruffians, stage-drivers, Indians, Mormons, and buffaloes.

A number of the more blood-curdling anecdotes he has detailed to Mrs. Livingston at odd times, enjoying her shudderings at such stories as that of the waiter in the New Mexico hotel, who shot the Chicago drummer to death because he declined to eat the eggs and said they were incipient chickens; also, a few of the more cruel exploits of celebrated Johnnie Slade, the murderous superintendent of a division of the Ben Holliday's stage line, together with a full, true and accurate account of the atrocious butchery of one hundred and thirty three men, women and children by the notorious John D. Lee, of Utah, the Mormon bishop, and a portion of the Mormon militia, disguised as Indians, that occurred in 1857, and now known under the head of the Mountain Meadow Massacre; "The Last Shot of Joaquin, the California Bandit," etc., etc.

These revelations of Western atrocity Mr. Ferdinand is delighted to see produce upon the nerves of Mrs. Livingston effects more demoralizing than the morphine habit. And he would continue his narrations, with much gusto, to the agitated Mrs. Livingston, did not Erma, who has been listening indifferently to his tales of blood, suddenly, at her first opportunity, lead the chuckling Ferdie aside, and, placing two flaming eyes upon him, whisper: "Not another of your Western horrors to your aunt!" Then her voice grows pathetic, and she mutters: "Would you frighten her so that she retreats from her journey and takes me back to New York, and deprives me of seeing my father—the joy I am looking forward to minute by minute, and hour by hour."

This oration, emphasized by savage glances and made pathetic by flashing eyes, has a great effect on Mr. Ferdinand, and he promises silence, remarking to himself: "What a stunner that Erma is, and only out of boarding school ten months."

As it is, when Ferdie first looks upon the Missouri River and utters, "The West is now before me. I feel as if I knew it very well from my guide-book," tapping his blood-curdling volume. "Now for a practical experience of the same," adding to this one or two attempts at Indian war-whoops, the effect of his narratives has been so great on Mrs. Livingston that she puts her plump hands over her pale blue eyes and shudderingly mutters: "The West—shall I ever live to come out of it?" and would take train immediately for Eastern civilization, were it not that she fears the laughter of her daughter, Louise, and the sneers of Oliver, her son, who has several times pooh-poohed Ferdie's anecdotes of Rocky Mountain life, and once or twice, during his more atrocious recitals, has ejaculated "Bosh!"

As she descends from her car at Council Bluffs, she lays one trembling hand on her son's arm, and makes one half-hearted expostulation, "Don't you think, since we are compelled to leave our private car here, we had better end the trip and return to New York immediately?"

This Mr. Oliver silences by a stern "What! Our tickets already bought for San Francisco? Besides that, Van Wyke Stuyvesant has just come back with his mother and sisters, and pronounces the trip delightful, and I don't wish Van Wyke, who is something of a braggart, to be able to talk of the Yosemite and Big-trees and I be unable to say I have been there also. Besides, Erma is looking forward to meeting her father."

Thus compelled, Mrs. Livingston nervously accepts her son's escort to the ferry boat, and the party cross the Missouri River to take cars at Omaha on the Union Pacific Railway—Mr. Oliver, calmly indifferent to his mother's feelings, and only intent upon using some of the chances of the journey for making his romantic declaration to Miss Travenion.

It will give that young lady, he imagines, the opportunity she is anxiously awaiting, to accept his distinguished name, large fortune and small heart; though did he but guess it, Miss Travenion has but one thought in her soul—fifteen hundred miles nearer papa!

Mr. Chauncey, however, is very anxious for the wonders of the border land he has read about, crazy to see a herd of buffaloes, and determined to investigate Western matters for himself generally, in order to have some rare stories of frontier life with which to make his Eastern college chums open their eyes over social spreads at the "D. K. E.," for this young gentleman will enter Harvard as freshman next term. An Alma Mater of which he is already very proud in futuro, and in which he is very anxious to distinguish himself, not as a reading man, but as a Harvard man—a being, who, this young gentleman fondly imagines, has the beauty of an Adonis, the muscle of a Sullivan, the pluck of a bull-terrier, the brain of a Macchiavelli, and the morals of a Don Juan, disguised by the demeanor and bearing of a Lord Chesterfield.

So the young man springs eagerly ashore on the Nebraska side of the Missouri, and cries out in a laughing voice: "Omaha! All aboard for the Rockies and buffaloes and Indians and scalpings!" exclamations which make the widow's nerves tingle and the widow's plump hands shake a little, as her son assists her across the gang-plank.

Then, his mother being landed, Ollie turns to offer the same attention to Erma, but to his astonishment he is anticipated in his act of gallantry by the Western Mr. Kruger.

This gentleman, apparently, near his native heath, has grown bolder, and as he expresses it to himself, "has been do'en the perlite" to Miss Travenion, indicating to her the various points of interest in Omaha as seen from the river, together with the Union Pacific Railway bridge, which is at this time in process of construction.

"Your daddy and I once spent four hours in winter trying to get across this river, Sissy, and were mighty nigh froze to death doing it, and if it had not been for my U. S. blanket overcoat that I picked up when Johnston was out thar invadin' us"—he checks himself shortly here and mumbles: "I reckon your old man would have given in. But here we air—Permit the hand of fellowship over the step-off!"

This allusion to her father is received by a grateful "thank you" from the young lady, who, if she has read of Albert Sydney Johnston's campaign in Utah has forgotten the same, and she accepts Mr. Kruger's aid across the gang-plank in so easy and affable a manner that Lot proffers his further escort to the omnibus waiting to bear this young lady up the hill toward what is called the railroad depot in Omaha. Having assisted her into the 'bus with rather effusive gallantry, and noting during his attentions a ravishing ankle in silken hose that makes his fatherly eyes grow red and watery, he remarks with a chuckle to himself as he sees the New York beauty drive off: "If Miss High-Fallutin' should come to Zion in the Far West, oh Saints of Melchisedec!" and is so overcome by his emotions that he almost misses the last transfer omnibus.

So, it comes to pass that in the course of a few minutes they all find themselves at that ramshackle affair that was, and is now, for that matter, termed the Western Union Depot in Omaha. Here the train is drawn up, ready for its race towards the West. Attached to it are two Pullman cars, in one of which Erma's party have engaged their accommodations, which consist of a rear stateroom, occupied by Mrs. Livingston and her daughter, a forward stateroom, which has been engaged for Miss Travenion and her maid. The section next his mother's being occupied entirely by Oliver, that young man always looking after his own comfort and luxury very thoroughly; while a section in the forward end of the car, next Miss Travenion's stateroom, has been set apart for Mr. Ferdinand Chauncey in order that he may be situated so as to give Erma any masculine assistance or protection she may require.

Of course, this is by no means so convenient for the New York party as the private car, which had been placed at their service by a relative of Mrs. Livingston, one of the magnates of the Pennsylvania Railway, but it had been considered by Mr. Oliver best to submit to the more contracted accommodations found upon a general sleeping car than to the exorbitant charges of the Western railways.

Miss Travenion has already made herself comfortable in her stateroom by the aid of her maid, a pretty French girl, who is about as useless a one as could have been selected for this trip, save in the matter of feminine toilet; when glancing into the open portion of the sleeping car, Erma gets a little surprise. She sees Captain Harry Storey Lawrence entering the same, and placing his impedimenta in the section opposite Ferdie's, which from its location is also next to her stateroom. She gives the young man a slight bow, which he acknowledges with military courtesy, a little red showing under the tan of the sun upon his hardy cheeks; but thinks only passingly of the matter, judging it a mere chance of travel, she having already heard the gentleman state that he was returning to Utah.

She would probably pay more attention to the affair did she know that what she considers a mere accident of travel, has been brought about on the part of the young man by deliberate design.

Lawrence having finished his business in Chicago, and his telegrams from Southmead received at the Sherman House indicating that there was no immediate hurry for his presence in Salt Lake, that young gentleman had said to himself, "Why not travel with her? Three days in a Pullman sleeper are equal to a voyage at sea. Before my arrival at Salt Lake, she shall have better acquaintance with me than a few words in a Delmonico supper room can produce." Actuated by this idea, the captain had journeyed leisurely to Omaha, and discovering the location of Erma's stateroom, had promptly selected the section next to it for the trip to the West.

Very shortly after this, with much ringing of bell and much blowing of whistle, the train gets into motion, and passing out of the Omaha depot, in a few minutes is climbing a little ascent over which it will pass into the valley of the Platte, to run along endless plains till the snowy summits of the Rocky Mountains come into view on the Western horizon.

To the south, a low range of hills is bordering the river; to the north prairies, nothing but prairies; to the west nothing but prairies, save two long lines of rails that run straight as an arrow towards the setting sun till they seem to come together and be one.

Gazing at these, her eyes full of expectant happiness and hope, Miss Travenion murmurs, "At the end of these, one thousand and odd miles away, my father," and the green prairies of Nebraska grow very beautiful to her, and the soft southern wind, as it enters the car windows, seems very pleasant to her, and the rays of the setting sun make the green grass lands and the long reaches of the Platte River flowing over its yellow quicksands and dotted with its little cottonwood islands seem like a landscape of Heaven to her.

Then Ferdie comes in, looking eagerly out of the car window, and whispers: "Do you see any buffaloes yet? I have got a revolver and a sporting rifle to kill them." A second after he ejaculates, "What's that!"

And Erma starts and echoes "What's that?"

For it is a sound these two have never heard the like of before—the shriek of the Western train book agent—not the pitiful note of the puny Eastern vender, but the wild whoop of the genuine transcontinental fiend, who in the earlier seventies went bellowing through a car like a calliope on a Mississippi River boat.

"Bre-own's prize candies! Twenty-five cents a box, warranted fresh and something that'll make you feel pleased and slick in every one of 'em—Bre-own's prize candies."

Being of a speculative turn of mind, Ferdie invests in one or two of these, and he and Erma open them together and laugh at their bad luck, for Ferdie has won a Jew's harp, worth about a cent, and she is the happy possessor of a brass thimble, and the candies, apparently, have been manufactured before Noah's Ark put to sea. While joking about this, a new idea seems to strike Ferdie.

The news-boy, who has gathered up his packages after making his trades on the sharpest of business principles, is leaving the car. Mr. Chauncey asks him if he has any Western literature.

"I always have everything," cries the young man. "Give you 'The Scout of the Plains,' or 'Long Har, the Hermit of the Rockies,' for twenty-five cents."

"I don't want fiction; facts are what I'm after," says Ferdie, interrupting him.

"Then I'll accommodate also," remarks the youth, and going away, he returns after a few minutes bearing four or five bound volumes, entitled, "The Oatman Girls' Captivity among the Apaches," "The Construction of the Union Pacific Railway," "The Life and Adventures of Jim Beckworth, the Naturalized Crow Chief," "Kit Carson, the Pioneer," "Fremont's Explorations" and "Female Life among the Mormons, by the Wife of an Elder of the Latter-Day Saints."

"Facts come higher," he says, "than lies. These are bound books, and will cost you all the way from $1.50 up to $4. But you can turn 'em in at the end of the trip, if you want, and I will let you have fifty per cent. on them. I had sooner you did it that way, because then I'll bag the profit, not my boss."

Whereupon, Ferdie selects "Kit Carson," "The Building of the Union Pacific Railway," and "Female Life among the Mormons," tendering a ten-dollar bill, for which he receives very little change, but making the agreement for the return of the books on arrival at Ogden, much to the delight of the news-agent, who remarks oracularly, "Buck Powers is never quite left."

"Oh, that is your name, is it?" says Mr. Chauncey. "Probably you know a good deal about the West yourself?"

"I was born in Chicago," answers the boy proudly, "and railroaded ever since I was corn high."

"Ah, a railroad man?"

"You bet! I've run on the C. B. & Q., I have," remarks Buck, his voice growing proud, "and any man that has run on de boss road of the West out of Chicago, can call himself a railroad man and nothin' else."

In this exaltation of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, Buck was by no means alone in the early seventies, for somehow that was considered the great road west of the Mississippi, and all who were connected with it from a switchman up, seemed to be very proud of the C. B. & Q., and to run upon it into Chicago, appeared to them to be the acme of railroad bliss and happiness, which was the acme of all happiness. So they kicked off tramps with a proud kick, and they coupled freight cars with a self-satisfied air, and they received deaths with complaisance as defective couplings broke and box cars crashed together, and they made up passenger trains and ran locomotives with the haughty air of men belonging to the most prominent road in that great country which centred in Chicago, to which the rest of America, especially the East, was but an attachment.

"Oh, you are a railroad man—a Western railroad man. Perhaps you can tell me about the Rocky Mountains?"

"What I can't tell you about the Rockies and the U. P. ain't worth knowing," remarks Buck. "After I get through with this candy trip, and give 'em a rattle or two on books, notions and fruit, I'll come back and give you some eye-openers, because I can see you're going to be a good trader." Thus tagging on business with pleasure and self-glorification, Buck Powers proceeds on his way through the cars, shouting in a voice that drowns the roll of the wheels and the tooting of the locomotive:

"Bre-own's prize candies! Twenty-five cents a package! Warranted fresh and genuine, and each package guaranteed to contain a donation! It is your last chance to-night! Last chance to-night for Bre-OWN's prize candy and Chicago chewing gum!"

During this interview, Miss Travenion has looked on with an amused glance. She is astounded that one so small can make so great a noise, for Mr. Buck Powers is but five feet and five inches high, and rather slight, skinny, and wiry of frame, but his voice is like that of Goliath of Gath, with occasional staccatos stolen from the midnight yelp of the coyote of the plains.

As the boy's howls die away in the next car, she says suddenly to Ferdie, "What are you going to do with those books?"

"Amuse auntie with them."

"That I forbid you to do. No more fibs about the West to Mrs. Livingston. Do you want her to have a nervous fever?"

"Very well," remarks Ferdinand, contemplatively. "If you object to my instructing auntie, I will keep them for my own amusement and knowledge." Then he cries suddenly, "By George, wasn't that a buffalo?" and throws up the car window, and looks out excitedly, to the serious danger of his caput, for the train is running through a small town.

And Erma laughs and says, "No, it's a cow."

Just here the conductor comes in and makes everybody on the car alert and happy, for he cries: "Grand Island! Thirty minutes for supper!"