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
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.