To sleep in a house, in the day
time, was almost killing, so I used to make up a sort of bunk on a truck
and sleep in the shade of the freight shed. At seven-forty-three in the
evening, the Trans-Continental flyer went smashing by at a fifty-five
mile an hour clip and the dust it raised was enough to strangle a man.
The Arizona climate is a well known specific for pulmonary troubles, and
thousands of people come down there in all stages of consumption from
the first premonitory cough to the living emaciated skeleton.
The first station west of me was Clear Creek (so called on account of a
good sized stream of water that came down from the Mogollons), and a few
days after I arrived at Blue Field, I heard a message going over the
wires saying that Fred Baird was coming down there to take charge. I had
known him up in Kansas, and his looks and a hacking cough indicated only
too truly, that the dreaded consumption had fastened itself on him;
therefore when I heard of his assignment to Clear Creek, I knew it was
his health that brought him down to that awful country.
Pages:
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286