IT MIGHT HAVE HAPPENED OTHERWISE
The growth of the thing in his mind had been gradual. When it had obtrudedupon his consciousness at first he had drawn back in mingled fear and anger. Bydegrees, however, he tolerated the thought, only always at a distance, andconcluded by allowing it to make a rendezvous of his idle meditations, receivingit much as one might welcome an unwholesome but highly fascinating acquaintance.All the time he knew its real name was Theft.
For three years Parsly had served as station agent and telegraph-operator atthe Junction. Each day he had observed the transient bustling by the longplatform, the spectacle never varying. Long vestibuled trains haltedimpatiently, and always the same curious or apathetic faces peered out at himfrom the Pullmans.
It was the branch line, tapping the lumber country, that contributedhumanism, consisting of a nodding acquaintance with timber operators and forlorncommercial travelers. The first were always in a hurry to make the big cityconnection; the latter lingered in his company for the sake of gaining anaudience while they cursed the country.
The last because the Junction was not the liveliest place in the world to putin an hour or two of waiting. Situated where the engineering problem had beenthe simplest, it was surrounded by blueberry plains, dotted at intervals withscrub pine. As the locomotives annually set the pines afire, the immediateforeground continuously presented a dead, charred appearance. Far-off, theobjective point of the Pullmans, loomed the cool silhouettes of mountains,guardians of inland lakes and famous fishing.
More than once Parsly compared himself with Robinson Crusoe in his isolation;only he had no man Friday to enliven his dull routine. He saw much of thepassing world but was never of it. Thus, at the end of three years, the hurryingby of the heavy trains aroused a species of resentment. Everyone was at libertyto take flight but him. Then again, fifty dollars a month for his combinedduties was hardly a compensating solace.
It was the matter of salary that caused the idea to germinate while he wassullenly working the semaphore one day. He had just received from the nightbranch some four hundred dollars express money which he must deliver to theagent on the morning city-passenger. Having just received his monthly wages hecould not help but contrast its meager total with the bulking roll in hiship-pocket.
If he had four hundred dollars, all his own, he would throw up the job anduse it in one delicious round of travel. By the time it was exhausted he couldobtain another position in a pleasing environment. In logical sequence hedecided he might as well allow his imagination a wider range and play at takinga vacation with the largest sum ever entrusted to his care for a single night.He remembered this to be an even thousand dollars, sent down by a big operatorin payment for horses in the lumber camps.
A thousand dollars offered his fancy vastly more possibilities to work with.The four hundred became insignificant. As his duties permitted him much time forreflection, he carried the thought back to his dingy office and entertained itby consulting maps in the railroad folders. In this fashion he took a hurriedexcursion across the continent and spied out the land. Then he became criticaland weighed and balanced different localities.
The Southwest, fr