The driver had merely turned in his high seat and tossed the orange to a street urchin, saying, “Here, Bub-a dallywhack fer yer girl." But Bill, the stage-driver, was willing to give the other fellow the benefit of the doubt, so after they were out a few miles and the chill of the night had settled down in the hollows, he offered his seat companion a little nip from a bottle. But the companion deBut the companion declined, with an attempt at a joke. Then, when the horses were being watered and the men passengers had all climbed out to walk up the long grade out from Cow Cañon, Bill made social advances to another passenger, with a chilling like result. "First pro'bition crowd I ever been with," Bill said, with a sneery little grin. The wind flapped the loose sides of the stage-coach out on Ryegrass Plain, and the inside passengers snuggled themselves as best they could in the crowded seats and amid the express packages and extra mail-sacks. Bill's schedule required that he make up on this level stretch the time lost in climbing the hill. He didn't try to dodge all the stones and chucks in the road, for the rocking thoroughbrace, with its long leather springs, was designed to withstand just such jolts. It was a little hard on travelers, but to Bill they were only just so many fares for the Boss. And Bill's parched cheek twitched into half a smile when an unusually big stone and a chuck bounced all the rearseat passengers to the top of the coach and happened to leave one man looking through the crown of his stiff hat. A little farther on, the roads were cut up by the early spring freighting. The two little flickering kerosene lamps could not have thrown their light a great distance, even if the glass casements had not been smoky on the inside and covered with dry mud on the outside. Maybe, too, Bill had been called to extra imbibatory exertions because of the fact of the "pro'bition crowd." Anyway, all of a sudden a horse scared and jumped, and the wheels on one side were lifted on to an embankment, and the top-heavy coach balanced on the lower wheels. The women screamed, and two of the men kicked laprobes and trampled toes in a mad attempt to crawl out through a lower side door and head off their share of the wreck. The driver was busy caring for the frightened horses; but, happily, one of the men on the inside was seasoned, and he leaped through the upper door, placed his feet on the bottom of the coach, leaned far out, and was thus able to dissuade the coach from turning turtle. another five minutes everything was calm, and the passengers were being thankfully joggled and jolted and bumped along through the desert and after-midnight cold. The night traveling was forced by close competition for the mail-carrying contract, and to make proper connections with the daylight trips of the stub railway train. And so it is that stage-coach passengers to many of the larger interior points of the West must begin their trip in the night, and travel continuously, for from twelve to thirtysix hours or more, with only short stops for meals and when horses are changed. Of course there are extra daylight stages when the traffic warrants, which is not always, and only after the night stages are overloaded. The old stage-coach, even though a pioneering relic, and a being-shuffled-off big brother of the Indian-fighting pony express, is still the veins and the arteries of the great interior sections of the West. These stagecoach lines usually radiate from the stub railway terminals, sometimes carrying their passengers inland for a straight distance half as far as from New York City to Washington, D. C. The stage-coach carries the news of the outer world, the fresh fruits from the tropics, the latest fashions that are too ephemeral and ethereal to wait for the crawling freight-wagons that haul back clothing, provisions, and barbed wire after they have delivered at the railway their overtopping loads of wool and hides. Sup But the last two years have seen the historical glory and the practical utility of the old stage-coach dimmed and sapped as never before in all the history of the West. posing, however, we jump back in our story to the screeching gasoline chariot that nettled tanned old Stage-driver Bill as it scooted past, with its load of prim passengers, and glided smoothly up the hill where Bill must order all the men of the stage-coach to roll out and walk for the relief of the four puffing horses. The stage-coach left Shandago at ten o'clock at night and completed its sixty-mile trip some time the next afternoon. The automobile crowd had waited until eight-thirty the next morning, and they arrived at the interior metropolis in time to walk about with the "boosters" for half an hour or more before noon luncheon. The stage-coach people had been chilled and baked and dust-smudged and jolted and bumped and peeved and THE AUTOMOBILE WAS ALSO MOST USEFUL FOR PATROL to keep so snippishly up-to-date as an interior The drummer's expense account looked a bit overloaded and suggestive of joy-riding to the high-browed bookkeeper back at the city office when the automobile vouchers began coming in. But reference to the salesman's schedule showed that he was covering his territory almost twice as fast, and that his average sales per town were fully as good as best records. As a net result of the experiment the salesman now has a much larger territory, and he is able to touch the smaller way points that he could not reach before. The sales manager has also proved that an automobile will soon pay for itself, so the pitied, beyond-the-frontier drummer is now more aristocratic than his city brothers, having a private touring car and a special and individual chauffeur for himself and samples. This salesman has also invaded with his automobile territory which can be reached by stub railway lines, finding that he often can equal the actual running time of the once-a-day mixed trains, and can stop at many more towns, and eliminate all of the nerve-eating waste time in making connections at the junction points. The frequent emergencies of the frontier often give the automobile an opportunity to test itself against mere horseflesh. To start with a mild example, two stockmen of the Northwest were on their way to the metropolis of the State. They had been modernized new-old profession of the West called "boosting." Nor should the mistake be made of thinking that the booster thrives only in railway centers and at those metropolitan points indicated on the map in big black letters. The modern interior booster does not cling to nor wait for civilization; he is civilization's advance agent; he harps the community's faith; draws blue-prints; is always in his automobile, motioning just ahead of the slowly moving torch. The automobil ized booster reasons that the big chiefs who authorize interior railway extensions are also human, that they are out to make their worn dollars grow big new dollars, just as is the booster; that all that is needed is fully to convince the public and then the railway giants that the new beyond-the-frontier country will pay dividends on railway investments. The automobile is a booster and a railway scouting necessity. How else, for instance, could vast railwayless central Oregon have hoped recently to have been chosen for the summer touring ground for such men as Louis W. Hill, chief spokesman for James J. Hill, and a railway president on his own account; and Judge Robert S. Lovett, executive head of the great Harriman railway system? Previous to their junkets up and down and crisscross through this great inland area came another visitor, also automobilewise. The interior at first knew the silent, disguised personage who directed the two large machines as John F. Sampson. A reporter later nosed out, however, that this man was John F. Stevens, former chief engineer for the Panama Canal, and then executive and advance railway scout for the Hill system. Stevens was making a sub rosa tour of the great empire that for a long period had been considered exclusive Harriman territory. Then Louis W. Hill followed into this vast interior area, as large as the State of Pennsylvania, that had never yet heard the whistle of a steam locomotive engine. The Hill party, carried by several automobiles, traveled hundreds of miles, zigzagged here and there from one hamlet and village to another, and were nearly always escorted by swarms of native automobiles. Robert S. Lovett, executive head of the Harriman system, when he came later, proved to be more in a hurry, or not such a good mixer. His several autos were unloaded from the train at the far eastern border of the railwayless area; they were provisioned and equipped as if for a crossing-the-continent trip; and then long drives were made, which carried the party west almost through the entire length of the State. Other automobiles and other railway officials have scouted out and estimated the territory in other of the interior sections of the West. But the booster and the booster automobiles do not alone entertain and assist railway officials. Every interior visitor who has even a shade of outside worldly prominence is showered by the native boosters with free automobile rides. It is business science with the booster. The automobile and the route and the quality of the crops have been tested in advance. The chauffeur drives leisurely past the field of tallest grain and the most heavily laden fruit trees, and "whips up his horses," as a native expresses it, when the trail of Jack Frost is neared. The automobile has verily brought a new mental poise to some portions and parts of the unbroken and almost untrodden interior. For example, the aged man who lives out on an isolated sub-ranch of an Oregon cattle king talked of Portland and San Francisco and Salt Lake City as if they were only over the first of the hundred ridges and mountains that one must cross to reach the nearest inhabited ranch twenty miles to the east, or as if these cities were in the midst of the wide, almost twigless plain that stretches drearily away for ten of the twenty miles that separate the lone bachelor from the nearest ranch toward the setting sun. The porch on which the old man sat was one hundred and thirty miles from the nearest railway station, fifty miles from the first town or village, and, incidentally, as far from a doctor, or barber shop, or restaurant. Yet this man was on a highway, an automobile highway, and on the vast level stretches between the hills an automobile can eat up distance in express-train fashion, and two hundred miles a day is not a very exceptional drive. The memory of the aged pioneer was dimmed to the picture of plodding mules and sore-footed ox-teams that brought him to the interior, the brutes crawling along at the rate of two or three miles an hour when the road was perfect, and two or three hours to the mile when it was otherwise. In general, the automobile has already earned its way to esteem even in the land where, in the past, no good thing could be done excepting on horseback. There may be still an occasional man who will as muscularly and primitively express his automobile regards as did the old freighter on Jumbo Mountain. The brakes on the lead and on the trail wagons were hard set, and gratingly squealing out the fact that the down grade was both rough and steep. The old freighter heard the warning toot of the automobile, far down the hill. He was following the grade along a concave arch in the mountain side. The road was wide, and the freighter had meant to stop a short distance ahead. Even as it was, the lone man in the trunkloaded automobile had plenty of room to pass. But the lead and the swing teams thought that the puffing gasoline car looked otherwise than like a bale of hay or a pan of oats. The autoist, being kind-hearted and perhaps new to the country, bethought to stop when his machine had cleared the wool-sacks on the trail wagon, and to wait until after the freighter had driven on. And to show further good faith, and to aid the freighter in training his horses to an appreciation of the good things of civilization, the auto-man hastened to help in quieting the teams and untangling them from the traces. "Leave them horses alone !" shouted the freighter. The auto-man hesitated, though he had better been cranking his machine. "Nobody asked fer your help," the freighter slammed out again, as he slid down from the high wagon seat. The auto-man still hesitated, looking toward the tangled horses. And the next thing the |