Wagon Train Quotes

You didn’t really hold back on Braga so Pickering could kill him, did you?” Royce asked after the two were left alone in the hallway. “Of course not. I held off because it’s death for a commoner to kill a noble.” “That’s what I thought.” Royce sounded relieved. “For a minute, I wondered if you’d gone from jumping on the good-deed wagon to leading the whole wagon train.

The stuff of nightmare is their plain bread. They butter it with pain. They set their clocks by deathwatch beetles, and thrive the centuries. They were the men with the leather-ribbon whips who sweated up the Pyramids seasoning it with other people's salt and other people's cracked hearts. They coursed Europe on the White Horses of the Plague. They whispered to Caesar that he was mortal, then sold daggers at half-price in the grand March sale. Some must have been lazing clowns, foot props for emperors, princes, and epileptic popes. Then out on the road, Gypsies in time, their populations grew as the world grew, spread, and there was more delicious variety of pain to thrive on. The train put wheels under them and here they run down the log road out of the Gothic and baroque; look at their wagons and coaches, the carving like medieval shrines, all of it stuff once drawn by horses, mules, or, maybe, men.

Gordie: Alright, alright, Mickey's a mouse, Donald's a duck, Pluto's a dog. What's Goofy? Vern: If I could only have one food for the rest of my life? That's easy-Pez. Cherry-flavored Pez. No question about it. Teddy: Goofy's a dog. He's definitely a dog. Gordie: I knew the $64,000 question was fixed. There's no way anybody could know that much about opera! Chris: He can't be a dog. He drives a car and wears a hat. Gordie: Wagon Train's a really cool show, but did you notice they never get anywhere? They just keep wagon training. Vern: Oh, God. That's weird. What the hell is Goofy?

Wagon Train was on. It seemed to be beaming in from some foreign country. I shut that off, too, and went into another room, a windowless one with a painted door--a dark cavern with a floor-to-ceiling library. I switched on the lamps. The place had an overpowering presence of literature and you couldn't help but lose your passion for dumbness.

The new country lay open before me: there were no fences in those days, and I could choose my own way over the grass uplands, trusting the pony to get me home again. Sometimes I followed the sunflower-bordered roads. Fuchs told me that the sunflowers were introduced into that country by the Mormons; that at the time of the persecution when they left Missouri and struck out into the wilderness to find a place where they could worship God in their own way, the members of the first exploring party, crossing the plains to Utah, scattered sunflower seeds as they went. The next summer, when the long trains of wagons came through with all the women and children, they had a sunflower trail to follow. I believe that botanists do not confirm Jake's story but, insist that the sunflower was native to those plains. Nevertheless, that legend has stuck in my mind, and sunflower-bordered roads always seem to me the roads to freedom.

In the schools of business administration Negroes are trained exclusively in the psychology and economics of Wall Street and are, therefore, made to despise the opportunities to run ice wagons, push banana carts, and sell peanuts among their own people. Foreigners, who have not studied economics but have studied Negroes, take up this business and grow rich.

Come away with me and be my wife.” She gave a harsh laugh. “If you want a wife, send for one by mail, or wait for the next wagon train to cross the mountains.” He came toward her. “I can give you a good life. I don’t care how you got here or where you’ve been before. Come with me now.

This was the road over which Ántonia and I came on that night when we got off the train at Black Hawk and were bedded down in the straw, wondering children, being taken we knew not whither. I had only to close my eyes to hear the rumbling of the wagons in the dark, and to be again overcome by that obliterating strangeness. The feelings of that night were so near that I could reach out and touch them with my hand. I had the sense of coming home to myself, and of having found out what a little circle man’s experience is. For Ántonia and for me, this had been the road of Destiny; had taken us to those early accidents of fortune which predetermined for us all that we can ever be. Now I understood that the same road was to bring us together again. Whatever we had missed, we possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past.

This part of Alabama is swampy, with mosquitoes that could murder a buffalo, given half a chance, not to mention dangerous flying roaches and a posse of local rats big enough to haul a wagon train from here to Timbuctoo.

Marshal

I’m not on the crazy train. Trains go fast. It’s more like a wagon. A long, slow ride on the crazy wagon. —MEME

Folks in the wagon train figured Ma would turn back, but they hadn’t known Ma so long as I had. Once she set her mind to something she wasn’t about to quit.

To understand why I jumped from the Mormon wagon train requires an understanding of what Mormons are and how they think. While Mormons have some quaint, quirky and fanatical ideas, they really aren't much different from millions of poor, guilt-ridden souls who, throughout the march of human history, have hitched their hopes to mass movements of one sort or another. Eric Hoffer, in his brilliant treatise, "The True Believer," explains the attraction of joining a cause: "A rising mass movement attracts and holds a following 'by the refuge it offers from the anxieties, barrenness and meaninglessness of an individual existence. It cures the poignantly frustrated by freeing them from their ineffectual selves--and it does this by enfolding and absorbing them into a closely knit and exultant corporate whole'. "Of all the cults and philosophies that competed in the Graeco-Roman world, Christianity alone developed from its inception a compact organization." Once I realized this, it wasn't much of a leap out of religion altogether once I flew the Mormon coop. I simply wanted to be free from organizational groupthink. I escaped from the stuffy attic of religion's "pray, pay and obey" mentality into journalism's open laboratory of "who, what, where, when and why.

Over the centuries, Americans have tacked between sanctifying the individual and celebrating community, between self-interest and social obligation, between the imagined ideals of the lone cowboy on the frontier and of the wagon train that relies on mutual aid. Alexis de Tocqueville took note of that tension and saw their coexistence as an American talent, which he called “self-interest rightly understood.

This was the road over which Ántonia and I came on that night when we got off the train at Black Hawk and were bedded down in the straw, wondering children, being taken we knew not whither. I had only to close my eyes to hear the rumbling of the wagons in the dark, and to be again overcome by that obliterating strangeness. The feelings of that night were so near that I could reach out and touch them with my hand. I had the sense of coming home to myself, and of having found out what a little circle man's experience is. For Ántonia and for me, this had been the road of Destiny; had taken us to those early accidents of fortune which predetermined for us all that we can ever be. Now I understood that the same road was to bring us together again. Whatever we had missed, we possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past.

From that night the thousand streets ran as one street, with imperceptible corners and changes of scene, broken by intervals of begged and stolen rides, on trains and trucks, and on country wagons with he at twenty and twentyfive and thirty sitting on the seat with his still, hard face and the clothes (even when soiled and worn) of a city man and the driver of the wagon not knowing who or what the passenger was and not daring to ask. The street ran into Oklahoma and Missouri and as far south again as Mexico and then back north to Chicago and Detroit and then back south again and at last to Mississippi. It was fifteen years long.

Remember this study when you are in a negotiation—make your initial request far too high. You have to start somewhere, and your initial decision or calculation greatly influences all the choices that follow, cascading out, each tethered to the anchors set before. Many of the choices you make every day are reruns of past decisions; as if traveling channels dug into a dirt road by a wagon train of selections, you follow the path created by your former self. External anchors, like prices before a sale or ridiculous requests, are obvious and can be avoided. Internal, self-generated anchors, are not so easy to bypass. You visit the same circuit of Web sites every day, eat basically the same few breakfasts. When it comes time to buy new cat food or take your car in for repairs, you have old favorites. Come election time, you pretty much already know who will and will not get your vote. These choices, so predictable—ask yourself what drives them. Are old anchors controlling your current decisions?

Denise était venue à pied de la gare Saint-Lazare, où un train de Cherbourg l’avait débarquée avec ses deux frères, après une nuit passée sur la dure banquette d’un wagon de troisième classe. Elle tenait par la main Pépé, et Jean la suivait, tous les trois brisés du voyage, effarés et perdus, au milieu du vaste Paris, le nez levé sur les maisons, demandant à chaque carrefour la rue de la Michodière, dans laquelle leur oncle Baudu demeurait. Mais, comme elle débouchait enfin sur la place Gaillon, la jeune fille s’arrêta net de surprise.

Indians were made for film. Indians were exotic and erotic. All those feathers, all that face paint, the breast plates, the bone chokers, the skimpy loincloths, not to mention the bows and arrows and spears, the war cries, the galloping horses, the stern stares, and the threatening grunts. We hunted buffalo, fought the cavalry, circled wagon trains, fought the cavalry, captured White women, fought the cavalry, scalped homesteaders, fought the cavalry. And don't forget the drums and the wild dances where we got all sweaty and lathered up, before we rode off to fight the cavalry.

There was music from my neighbor's house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft, or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motor-boats slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam. On week-ends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants, including an extra gardener, toiled all day with mops and scrubbing-brushes and hammers and garden-shears, repairing the ravages of the night before. Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruiterer in New York--every Monday these same oranges and lemons left his back door in a pyramid of pulpless halves. There was a machine in the kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour if a little button was pressed two hundred times by a butler's thumb. At least once a fortnight a corps of caterers came down with several hundred feet of canvas and enough colored lights to make a Christmas tree of Gatsby's enormous garden. On buffet tables, garnished with glistening hors-d'oeuvre, spiced baked hams crowded against salads of harlequin designs and pastry pigs and turkeys bewitched to a dark gold. In the main hall a bar with a real brass rail was set up, and stocked with gins and liquors and with cordials so long forgotten that most of his female guests were too young to know one from another. By seven o'clock the orchestra has arrived, no thin five-piece affair, but a whole pitful of oboes and trombones and saxophones and viols and cornets and piccolos, and low and high drums. The last swimmers have come in from the beach now and are dressing up-stairs; the cars from New York are parked five deep in the drive, and already the halls and salons and verandas are gaudy with primary colors, and hair shorn in strange new ways, and shawls beyond the dreams of Castile. The bar is in full swing, and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden outside, until the air is alive with chatter and laughter, and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot, and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other's names. The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun, and now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music, and the opera of voices pitches a key higher. Laughter is easier minute by minute, spilled with prodigality, tipped out at a cheerful word. The groups change more swiftly, swell with new arrivals, dissolve and form in the same breath; already there are wanderers, confident girls who weave here and there among the stouter and more stable, become for a sharp, joyous moment the centre of a group, and then, excited with triumph, glide on through the sea-change of faces and voices and color under the constantly changing light. Suddenly one of the gypsies, in trembling opal, seizes a cocktail out of the air, dumps it down for courage and, moving her hands like Frisco, dances out alone on the canvas platform. A momentary hush; the orchestra leader varies his rhythm obligingly for her, and there is a burst of chatter as the erroneous news goes around that she is Gilda Gray's understudy from the FOLLIES. The party has begun.

I always believed that once you take a decision, you have to give it your all. However, by doing so you will eventually miss a piece of your heart, or should I say, you will miss a wagon of your locomotive; like a locomotive that switches tracks and heads in a new direction, taking the rest of the train, but leaving one (or five) behind, and within it, some of your behavior, actions, habits and dreams — right along with it. Well, that's what the consequences of our decisions are all about. So every now and then, when I randomly think about my next step, goal or dream, I end up thinking about the old me Vs. me now.

If he died now, Grainier probably wouldn't know it until they came into the light of the gas lamps either side of the doctor's house. After they'd moved along for nearly an hour without conversation, listening only to the creaking wagon and the sound of the nearby river and the clop of the mares, it grew dark.

If you are so worried that Roman culture will change, then stop living off the backs of your slaves, and start doing work for yourselves. Or perhaps you prefer to keep watching wagon trains of a thousand Gauls roll in. Perhaps you would rather condone the slave traders with their pretty Greeks. In which case, you will soon have a Rome in which no one is Roman. You can force them to speak Latin, to wear tunics and sandals, but blood will out.

He also loved the city itself. Coming to and leaving Cousin Joe’s, he would gorge himself on hot dogs and cafeteria pie, price cigarette lighters and snap-brim hats in store windows, follow the pushboys with their rustling racks of furs and trousers. There were sailors and prizefighters; there were bums, sad and menacing, and ladies in piped jackets with dogs in their handbags. Tommy would feel the sidewalks hum and shudder as the trains rolled past beneath him. He heard men swearing and singing opera. On a sunny day, his peripheral vision would be spangled with light winking off the chrome headlights of taxicabs, the buckles on ladies’ shoes, the badges of policemen, the handles of pushcart lunch-wagons, the bulldog ornaments on the hoods of irate moving vans. This was Gotham City, Empire City, Metropolis. Its skies and rooftops were alive with men in capes and costumes, on the lookout for wrongdoers, saboteurs, and Communists. Tommy

One thing the army didn’t do very often was swoop in to deflect Indian attacks on wagon trains of settlers—there weren’t that many such assaults. Between 1842 and 1859, about thirty thousand Western emigrants died while en route by wagon train, but fewer than four hundred were killed by Indians. The wagon train death rate was 3 percent, compared to the 2.5 percent average among all Americans. Ninety percent of wagon train fatalities came from disease, with cholera the leading cause.

The main point arises from the fact that I've always acted alone. Americans like that immensely. Americans like the cowboy who leads the wagon train by riding ahead alone on his horse, the cowboy who rides all alone into the town, the village, with his horse and nothing else. Maybe even without a pistol, since he doesn't shoot. He acts, that's all, by being in the right place at the right time. In short, a Western.… This amazing, romantic character suits me precisely because to be alone has always been part of my style or, if you like, my technique.

This was the road over which Antonia and I came on that night when we got off the train at Black Hawk and were bedded down in the straw, wondering children, being taken we knew not whither. I had only to close my eyes to hear the rumbling of the wagons in the dark, and to be again overcome by that obliterating strangeness. The feelings of that night were so near that I could reach out and touch them with my hand. I had the sense of coming home to myself, and of having found out what a little circle man's experience is. For Antonia and for me, this had been the road of Destiny; had taken us to those early accidents of fortune which predetermined for us all that we can ever be. Now I understood that the same road was to bring us together again. Whatever we had missed, we possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past.

If you’ve finished with my wife’s hand, Hale, I would like her to have it back. As I said, we have things to do.” He tightened his arm around Emma, and with a stiff nod walked her off. “Why are you always so rude to Nate?” Emma cast him a glance as they walked back to the wagon. “I’m not rude, he’s rude. I don’t know about Indiana, but where I come from a man doesn’t hang onto the hand of another man’s wife.” He scowled and walked even faster. “But Nate’s an old friend. He was just being sociable.” Davis shook his head and snorted. Emma smiled. Maybe Sarah had been right, and Davis’s feelings were more engaged than she’d thought. Then her stomach clenched. She couldn’t allow that to happen. When the wagon train reached Oregon, she was going back to Indiana—with or without him.

When I was a young man I worked for a very good company that was very well run by very nice people who knew what they were doing. There was a lot of affection and we made everybody a lot of money. We would have walked into fire for Harold, our Chairman, and Carl, our President. Then they sold our division, and all that firewalking really did take place. The ultrasenior managers did fine, because they had one purpose—to get out of it with a conestoga of cash. The middle management did a lot less fine, because their purpose was different. Their purpose was to die protecting the executive wagon train on its way out of town. We all recognize that kind of story, and know it’s right around the bend for every one of us. And yet, we all line up every day prepared to lay down our lives for our leaders. Why? Why, when we know that, in the end, it is likely to end in tears—for us, not for them.

I saw a group of women standing by a station wagon. There were seven of them, pushing cartons and shopping bags over the open tailgate into the rear of the car. Celery stalks and boxes of Gleem stuck out of the bags. I took the camera from my lap, raised it to my eye, leaned out the window a bit, and trained it on the ladies as if I were shooting. One of them saw me and immediately nudged her companion but without taking her eyes off the camera. They waved. One by one the others reacted. They all smiled and waved. They seemed supremely happy. Maybe they sensed that they were waving at themselves, waving in the hope that someday if evidence is demanded of their passage through time, demanded by their own doubts, a moment might be recalled when they stood in a dazzling plaza in the sun and were registered on the transparent plastic ribbon; and thirty years away, on that day when proof is needed, it could be hoped that their film is being projected on a screen somewhere, and there they stand, verified, in chemical reincarnation, waving at their own old age, smiling their reassurance to the decades, a race of eternal pilgrims in a marketplace in the dusty sunlight, seven arms extended in a fabulous salute to the forgetfulness of being. What better proof (if proof is ever needed) that they have truly been alive? Their happiness, I think, was made of this, the anticipation of incontestable evidence, and had nothing to do with the present moment, which would pass with all the others into whatever is the opposite of eternity. I pretended to keep shooting, gathering their wasted light, letting their smiles enter the lens and wander the camera-body seeking the magic spool, the gelatin which captures the image, the film which threads through the waiting gate. Sullivan came out of the supermarket and I lowered the camera. I could not help feeling that what I was discovering here was power of a sort.

He had had reason before to contemplate this difficult but stubborn fact: that human beings find it almost impossible to conceive of their own death. After all, one of Rudi’s fellow Auschwitz escapees had encountered this phenomenon directly and within months of his escape. In a desperate turn of events, Czesław Mordowicz was caught by the Gestapo in late 1944 and put on a transport that would send him back to Auschwitz. Inside the cattle truck, he told his fellow deportees that he knew what awaited them. ‘Listen,’ he pleaded, ‘you are going to your death.’ Czesław urged the people jammed into the wagon to join him and jump off the moving train. They refused. Instead they began shouting, banging on the doors and calling the German guards. They attacked Mordowicz and beat him so badly, he was all but incapacitated. He never did leap off that train, but ended up back in Birkenau. All because he had given a warning that the warned could not believe and did not want to hear.

A massive ball of brown water, uprooted tree trunks, sheared rooftops, bloated horses, stiff dogs and cats, shattered church windows, broken pews, sodden Bibles, Memorial Day flags, busted brick walls, twisted train cars, splintered rail lines, bowed streetlamps, upturned carriages, naked dolls, bent tin soldiers, dented red wagons, books, black stoves, beds, tables, armchairs, mantels, photographs, love letters, wedding dresses, baby booties, and masses of drowned humanity careens straight for us. Neither Eugene Eggar nor I can move.

and endless inconvenience. But have I not heard you say often that to solve a case a man has only to lie back in his chair and think? Do that. Interview the passengers on the train, view the body, examine what clues there are and then—well, I have faith in you! I am assured that it is no idle boast of yours. Lie back and think—use (as I have heard you say so often) the little grey cells of the mind—and you will know!” He leaned forward, looking affectionately at his friend. “Your faith touches me, my friend,” said Poirot emotionally. “As you say, this cannot be a difficult case. I myself, last night—but we will not speak of that now. In truth, this problem intrigues me. I was reflecting, not half an hour ago, that many hours of boredom lay ahead whilst we are stuck here. And now—a problem lies ready to my hand.” “You accept then?” said M. Bouc eagerly. “C’est entendu. You place the matter in my hands.” “Good—we are all at your service.” “To begin with, I should like a plan of the Istanbul-Calais coach, with a note of the people who occupied the several compartments, and I should also like to see their passports and their tickets.” “Michel will get you those.” The Wagon Lit conductor left the compartment. “What other passengers are there on the train?” asked Poirot. “In this coach Dr. Constantine and I

I had broken myself of the habit of thinking in short song cycles and began reading longer and longer poems to see if I could remember anything I read about in the beginning. I trained my mind to do this, had cast off gloomy habits and learned to settle myself down... I began cramming my brain with all kinds of deep poems. It seemed like I'd been pulling an empty wagon for a long time and now I was beginning to fill it up and would have to pull harder. I felt like I was coming out of the back pasture. I was changing in other ways, too. Things that used to affect me, didn't affect me anymore. I wasn’t too concerned about people, their motives. I didn’t feel the need to examine every stranger that approached.

I had broken myself of the habit of thinking in short song cycles and began reading longer and longer poems to see if I could remember anything I read about in the beginning. I trained my mind to do this, had cast off gloomy habits and learned to settle myself down... I began cramming my brain with all kinds of deep poems. It seemed like I'd been pulling an empty wagon for a long time and now I was beginning to fill it up and would have to pull harder. I felt like I was coming out of the back pasture. I was changing in other ways, too. Things that used to affect me, didn't affect me anymore. I wasn’t too concerned about people, their motives. I didn’t feel the need to examine every stranger that approached.

Once the mobilization button was pushed, the whole vast machinery for calling up, equipping, and transporting two million men began turning automatically. Reservists went to their designated depots, were issued uniforms, equipment, and arms, formed into companies and companies into battalions, were joined by cavalry, cyclists, artillery, medical units, cook wagons, blacksmith wagons, even postal wagons, moved according to prepared railway timetables to concentration points near the frontier where they would be formed into divisions, divisions into corps, and corps into armies ready to advance and fight. One army corps alone—out of the total of 40 in the German forces—required 170 railway cars for officers, 965 for infantry, 2,960 for cavalry, 1,915 for artillery and supply wagons, 6,010 in all, grouped in 140 trains and an equal number again for their supplies. From the moment the order was given, everything was to move at fixed times according to a schedule precise down to the number of train axles that would pass over a given bridge within a given time.

THE JOURNEY BACK from Regium to Rome was easier than our progress south had been, for by now it was early spring, and the mainland soft and welcoming. Not that we had much opportunity to admire the birds and flowers. Cicero worked every mile of the way, swaying and pitching in the back of his covered wagon, as he assembled the outline of his case against Verres. I would fetch documents from the baggage cart as he needed them and walk along at the rear of his carriage taking down his dictation, which was no easy feat. His plan, as I understood it, was to separate the mass of evidence into four sets of charges — corruption as a judge, extortion in collecting taxes and official revenues, the plundering of private and municipal property, and finally, illegal and tyrannical punishments. Witness statements and records were grouped accordingly, and even as he bounced along, he began drafting whole passages of his opening speech. (Just as he had trained his body to carry the weight of his ambition, so he had, by effort of will, cured himself of travel sickness, and over the years he was to do a vast amount of work while journeying up and down Italy.) In this manner, almost without his noticing where he was, we completed the trip in less than a fortnight and came at last to Rome on the Ides of March,

IN THE WAGON where the bread had landed, a battle had ensued. Men were hurling themselves against each other, trampling, tearing at and mauling each other. Beasts of prey unleashed, animal hate in their eyes. An extraordinary vitality possessed them, sharpening their teeth and nails. A crowd of workmen and curious passersby had formed all along the train. They had undoubtedly never seen a train with this kind of cargo. Soon, pieces of bread were falling into the wagons from all sides. And the spectators observed these emaciated creatures ready to kill for a crust of bread. A piece fell into our wagon. I decided not to move. Anyway, I knew that I would not be strong enough to fight off dozens of violent men! I saw, not far from me, an old man dragging himself on all fours. He had just detached himself from the struggling mob. He was holding one hand to his heart. At first I thought he had received a blow to his chest. Then I understood: he was hiding a piece of bread under his shirt. With lightning speed he pulled it out and put it to his mouth. His eyes lit up, a smile, like a grimace, illuminated his ashen face. And was immediately extinguished. A shadow had lain down beside him. And this shadow threw itself over him. Stunned by the blows, the old man was crying: “Meir, my little Meir! Don’t you recognize me … You’re killing your father … I have bread … for you too … for you too …” He collapsed. But his fist was still clutching a small crust. He wanted to raise it to his mouth. But the other threw himself on him. The old man mumbled something, groaned, and died. Nobody cared. His son searched him, took the crust of bread, and began to devour it. He didn’t get far. Two men had been watching him. They jumped him. Others joined in. When they withdrew, there were two dead bodies next to me, the father and the son. I was sixteen.

In the nineteen sixties and seventies, there were people in all the democratic countries who didn’t have any real power, and they started going to the people who did have all the power and saying, “All these principles of equality you’ve been talking about since the French Revolution are very nice, but you don’t seem to be taking them very seriously. You’re all hypocrites, actually. So we’re going to make you take those principles seriously.” And they held demonstrations and bus rides, and occupied buildings, and it was very embarrassing for the people in power, because the other people had such a good argument, and anyone who listened seriously had to agree with them. ‘Feminism was working, and the civil rights movement was working, and all the other social justice movements were getting more and more support. So, in the nineteen eighties, the CIA—’ she turned to Keith and explained cheerfully, ‘this is where X-Files Theory comes into it – hired some really clever linguists to invent a secret weapon: an incredibly complicated way of talking about politics that didn’t actually make any sense, but which spread through all the universities in the world, because it sounded so impressive. And at first, the people who talked like this just hitched their wagon to the social justice movements, and everyone else let them come along for the ride, because they seemed harmless. But then they climbed on board the peace train and threw out the driver. ‘So instead of going to the people in power and saying, “How about upholding the universal principles you claim to believe in?” the people in the social justice movements ended up saying things like “My truth narrative is in competition with your truth narrative!” And the people in power replied, “Woe is me! You’ve thrown me in the briar patch!” And everyone else said, “Who are these idiots? Why should we trust them, when they can’t even speak properly?” And the CIA were happy. And the people in power were happy. And the secret weapon lived on in the universities for years and years, because everyone who’d played a part in the conspiracy was too embarrassed to admit what they’d done.

Gabriel invades Bella Blackcoat as the conquistadors, firewater and smallpox rolled into one. Like her ancestors on either side, she never stood a chance. The sound of his Harley is the pounding of the cavalry hooves of horses that forced her people off the plains. His helmet comes off his head like the hide off a slain buffalo. He pushes through the swinging doors to the bar like he is opening up the Oregon Trail. He strides towards her like a wagon train full of Mormons. His smile is the 1860 Henry repeating rifle, called by its victims the Spirit Gun, capable of mowing down 15 darker-skinned humans in even time. His black leather jacket and his mystery are a second and third clip of 44:02 cartridges. He sits down on a stool, a gold prospector staking a claim, and leans his penile forearm on the bar like it is a revoked treaty. He sings his song and it is Wounded Knee ready to bury Bella’s heart. Gabriel Ahrumet is one-man genocide. Behind the bar, a previously unknown chemical reaction takes place inside Bella as her hormones wake from a long afternoon nap, stretch languorously and start an ancient ceremony around a hurriedly erected campfire. The intensity increases with a ferocity that is disconcerting. A glow begins between her legs, melting the bottom half of her body like licorice on a griddle. Her eggs begin to jiggle and then to sizzle, spattering gooey chunks all over the stove. She slides off her stool. Her legs flow along the sawdust floor, slink up over the bar and wrap themselves around Gabe’s waist. He is too busy admiring the tousle of his hair in the Jim Beam mirror that hangs behind the bar to notice.

surprising results about a phenomenon he called “asymmetric weight gain and loss,” based on the experiences of 55,000 runners in his National Runners’ Health Study. Put simply, he found that you gain more weight when you stop exercising than you lose when you subsequently resume the identical exercise program. “In other words,” he says, “if you stop exercising you don’t get to resume where you left off.” Falling off the exercise wagon for a few weeks may just add a pound or two, but if it happens every year it can lead to steady accumulation of weight even though you’re working out diligently for the other 50 weeks of the year. Williams found that, after a break in exercise, women didn’t start losing weight again until they were running at least 10 miles a week, and men had to hit twice that total. Once they exceeded that level, the subjects were able to start reversing weight gained over holiday and other breaks.

No other supporting player won three Academy Awards, and you would be hard-pressed to name another character actor whose performances frequently overwhelmed those of ostensible leads like Joel McCrea and Barbara Stanwyck in Banjo on My Knee. “We’re supporting you. Be nice to us,” McCrea and Stanwyck joked with Brennan. Those stars had the fights of their lives trying to stay on equal terms with old Walter. Sure, other character actors have had their star turns—especially in television, which gave Ward Bond in Wagon Train, Raymond Burr in Perry Mason, and Harry Morgan in M.A.S.H. their respective moments of fame—but no character actor other than Brennan dominated the Hollywood century of popular entertainment, or attained the iconic status he achieved. To follow Brennan—beginning with his career as a seven-dollar-a-day extra—is to learn all you need to know about Hollywood and its mythologizing of the American dream. Walter Brennan became an archetype, not a stereotype.

You live here in Copper Creek, Miss Ashford?” She dipped a fresh cloth in the water and washed the bullet wound in the patient’s shoulder as best she could. “I do now. We arrived today.” She paused and straightened, the muscles in her back in spasms from bending over the table, and from too much riding on trains and coaches and wagons. She thought of Janie waiting at home, watching for her, and hoped she wasn’t worrying. Robert’s only concern would be that she’d left him overlong with people he didn’t know. He hated making chitchat. She just hoped he wasn’t acting sullen and stone-faced with Vince, Janie, and Emma, like he so often did with her. Hearing a clock ticking somewhere behind her, she rethreaded the needle and focused again on her task. Suturing a man was different from suturing a horse, and very definitely different from sewing saddles. Yet something about the repetition of the act felt similar, which made her wonder if she was doing it right. “We?” Finishing the third suture in the man’s shoulder, she peered up at Caradon, the needle poised between her right thumb and forefinger. “I beg your pardon?” “You said ‘we arrived today.’” Not wanting to talk, she tied off a fourth suture, and a fifth, aware of him watching her. “My brother and I.” “Where did you move from?” She raised her head to find him leaning close, their faces inches apart. “If you don’t mind, Marshal Caradon, could we . . . not talk right now?” The tanned lines at the corners of his eyes tightened ever so slightly. “Not much on that, are you, ma’am? Talking, I mean.” Though his expression denied it, she heard a smile in his voice, yet she held back from responding to it. Outwardly anyway. Someone like Wyatt Caradon was the last person she, or Robert, needed in their lives right now. “I don’t mind talking, Marshal. When I’m not exhausted, famished, and stitching up a gunshot wound.” Catching his grin before she looked away, she finished suturing and bandaging the wound.

through town and returned to the

...for years the first of May was the day all leases expired, and on that day mass migrations would take place, with families lugging eiderdowns and ancestral portraits through the streets, as if in parody of the march of the wagon trains.

THE RECKONING BROTHER’S KEEPER SINS OF THE FATHER THE BURNING THE DODGE CITY MASSACRE HELL HATH NO FURY THE RIVER RUNS RED DEATH DANCE BLOOD TRAIL BADGE OF HONOR LONG GUNS WANTED TIN MAN RETRIBUTION HIRED GUN HUNTED RESURRECTION IN COLD BLOOD REAGAN’S RIDERS THE BOUNTY WAGON TRAIN THE KILLING HOMBRE BODY COUNT HUNT DOWN FROM THE GRAVE BLACK RAVEN THE BOUNTY HUNTERS TO HELL AND BACK MACHETE STREETS OF LAREDO RIDE OF REVENGE COLD JUSTICE GOD’S GUN DARK CLOUD REDEMPTION TROUBLE IN NAVARRO BLACK HEART COMING SOON… THE 39TH BOOK IN THE JESS WILLIAMS WESTERN SERIES

I fidget through class, barely paying attention to Mrs. Schumaker droning on about wagon trains and buffalo. I get it. Life on the prairie was tough. Churning your own butter? Yay for the Industrial Revolution.

But it wasn't a sentimental romance. It was more like a battered estate wagon in which they bounced along together, sometimes cheerfully amused by the same joke, other times grimly tolerating one another and determined to get where they were going.

Before she could take a step, he lifted her and carried her into the house. “What are you doing? I can walk, put me down.” “It’s good luck to carry the bride over the threshold of her new home,” Davis said, grinning. “Have you looked at me?” Emma patted her stomach. “I’m no bride.” “Yes, you are, darlin’, you’re my bride and this is our home.” Then he kissed her gently and set her on her feet. “But,” he added with laughter in his eyes, “you’re a mite heavier than you were when we said those vows on the wagon train.” He ducked as she swatted at him.

If Emma wants to dance with you, that’s up to her.” Davis said through clenched teeth. “I would like that, Nate,” Emma said, “since I won’t be seeing you after tonight.” “Oh, but you will.” He looked smugly at Davis. “Corporal Stevens and I will be accompanying your wagon train all the way to Oregon City when you leave in the morning.” Tipping his hat again, he turned and strolled away. “Sonofabitch.” Davis muttered to the soldier’s back.

asked insistently whether anybody had seen the certificate for Spiegel, somebody said that a blond woman had taken it, intending to give it to my Father. She was the daughter in law of the people, where we had stayed. She knew that we were on the way to the deportation. Since she could not go any further to look for us, for she would have been swallowed up by that mass of humanity, she gave it to a man, who was going as a deportee and told him: "If you see Mr. Spiegel, he is a man with a beard, give it to him." When I heard that the certificate was taken to the railroad I ran again toward the station, without the paper. I arrived as the trains were ready to leave. My parents were in a cattle car, some people, were still drinking a last gulp of water at a pump. Almost unable to shout any more, I ran from car to car, asking whether anybody had a certificate for Spiegel. A man called from inside a cattle wagon, asked me for the first name and gave me the certificate for Markus Spiegel. I frantically ran and called my parents' name and as the trains were about to leave, I got them out.

They were chased toward the rail road station. Romanian soldiers chased them to hurry, to fill up the cattle wagons. By the evening, the trains fully packed, sides bolted - they were on their way to concentration camps. On that first day, my friend Lola and her entire family left, among so many others. As we had our knapsacks ready to go, we went to a different location in the Ghetto, because next day was our turn to leave for Transnistria. As we had seen on the first day what was happening, we three decided that it was better to try to leave later. Thus, we made up our minds to go from place to place, maybe a miracle would still happen.

Rail longer than train cars ; and the hope than our reasons. (Rail plus long que les wagons ; - Et l'espoir que nos raisons.)

K ka kangourou (kangaroo) L el miel (honey) M em mouton (sheep) N en nid (nest) O oh olivier (olive tree) P pay pélican (pelican) Q kew queue (tail) R air raton (raccoon) S es santé (health) T tay thé (tea) U ew univers (universe) V vay végétarien (vegetarian) W DO-bluh-vay wagon (train car) X eex xylophone (xylophone) Y e-GRECK yaourt (yogurt) Z zed zéro (zero)

I was enchanted as soon as I stepped off the train. As were the hundreds of others who got off the train with me who were now in the process of climbing into buggies and wagons, en route to the dozens of resorts, enclaves, and tent campgrounds in the area, where they would soak up the sun, get drunk on Cabernet, swim and picnic in the druidy redwood groves while reciting Shakespeare. I climbed into a wagon and was driven off by a Mr. Lars Magnusson to view the old Olson farm. We traveled a mile or so into the hills, past oak glens, brooks, and pools of water, past manzanitas, madrones, and trees dripping with Spanish moss. Sonoma Mountain was to the west; its shadow cast everything in a soft purple light. When we finally reached the farm and I saw the luscious valley spread out in front of me, I knew this was it. Greengage. It would be a home for me and Martha at first, but I hoped it would soon be something more. A tribute to my mother and her ideals; a community in which she would have flourished, where she would have lived a good long life. Greengage.The burbling creek that ran smack down the middle of the property. The prune, apple, and almond orchards: the fields of wheat, potatoes, and melons. The pastures for cows and sheep. The chicken house and pigsty. The gentle, sloping hills, mounds that looked like God's knuckles, where I would one day plant a vineyard.

In turn, the Indians were to promise not to harass the white wagon trains and to allow the government to build forts and roads to protect the trains-which they were already doing. The tribes were also to stay within

taken to

that building a company was like being on a wagon train headed west. On the long journey to the land of plenty, the pioneers would be full of purpose and united by the goal of reaching their destination. Once they arrived, he’d say, people would come and go, and that was as it should be. But the process of moving toward something—of having not yet arrived—was what he idealized.

This is a central theme in literature and movies; from Wagon Train to Star Trek, Americans admire this desire to boldly go and then bravely defend themselves from those who resent discovery.

be Aleppo. Nothing to see, of course. Just a long, poor-lighted platform with loud furious altercations in Arabic going on somewhere. Two men below her window were talking French. One was a French officer, the other was a little man with enormous moustaches. She smiled faintly. She had never seen anyone quite so heavily muffled up. It must be very cold outside. That was why they heated the train so terribly. She tried to force the window down lower, but it would not go. The Wagon Lit conductor had come up to the two men. The train was about to depart, he said. Monsieur had better mount. The little man removed his hat. What an egg-shaped head

This must be Aleppo. Nothing to see, of course. Just a long, poor-lighted platform with loud furious altercations in Arabic going on somewhere. Two men below her window were talking French. One was a French officer, the other was a little man with enormous moustaches. She smiled faintly. She had never seen anyone quite so heavily muffled up. It must be very cold outside. That was why they heated the train so terribly. She tried to force the window down lower, but it would not go. The Wagon Lit conductor had come up to the two men. The train was about to depart, he said. Monsieur had better mount. The little man removed his hat. What an egg-shaped head

somewhere. Two men below her window were talking French. One was a French officer, the other was a little man with enormous moustaches. She smiled faintly. She had never seen anyone quite so heavily muffled up. It must be very cold outside. That was why they heated the train so terribly. She tried to force the window down lower, but it would not go. The Wagon Lit conductor had come up to the two men. The train was about to depart, he said. Monsieur had better mount. The little man

This must be Aleppo. Nothing to see, of course. Just a long, poor-lighted platform with loud furious altercations in Arabic going on somewhere. Two men below her window were talking French. One was a French officer, the other was a little man with enormous moustaches. She smiled faintly. She had never seen anyone quite so heavily muffled up. It must be very cold outside. That was why they heated the train so terribly. She tried to force the window down lower, but it would not go. The Wagon Lit conductor had come up to the two men. The train was about to depart, he said. Monsieur had better mount. The little man

This must be Aleppo. Nothing to see, of course. Just a long, poor-lighted platform with loud furious altercations in Arabic going on somewhere. Two men below her window were talking French. One was a French officer, the other was a little man with enormous moustaches. She smiled faintly. She had never seen anyone quite so heavily muffled up. It must be very cold outside. That was why they heated the train so terribly. She tried to force the window down lower, but it would not go. The Wagon Lit conductor had come up to the two men. The train was about to depart, he said. Monsieur had better mount. The little man removed his hat. What an egg-shaped

This must be Aleppo. Nothing to see, of course. Just a long, poor-lighted platform with loud furious altercations in Arabic going on somewhere. Two men below her window were talking French. One was a French officer, the other was a little man with enormous moustaches. She smiled faintly. She had never seen anyone quite so heavily muffled up. It must be very cold outside. That was why they heated the train so terribly. She tried to force the window down lower, but it would not go. The Wagon Lit conductor had come up to the two men. The train was about to depart, he said. Monsieur had better mount. The little man removed his hat. What an egg-shaped head he had. In spite of her preoccupations Mary

Automobiles and horse wagons filled the streetcar's wake, and Rye stood at that intersection for a long time, staring at the tracks. The whole country was laced together with tracks. He could get on a train and end up in New York City if he wanted, and this felt like another reverie, or a premonition. The world was becoming a single place.

This here is Miz Nellie Ward," Dane started. "Until about an hour ago, she was the owner of one of the finest brothels in Dodge City.” He smiled at the woman and continued. “The place burned to the ground and all her girls left to work for another house.” “What the hell is this about, Marshal?” Mindy said. “If you think I’m going to work for Nellie you’re crazy.” She nodded at the woman. “No offense, Nellie. It’s just that I ain’t got a hankering for spending my time flat on my back. That about killed my mama.” “None taken,” Nellie said, her lips twitching. “Although that’s not why Nellie is here, missy, you might not be so quick to dismiss a job,” the marshal said. “Stuart stopped me on the way over here so I could tell you to turn in your dress, cause you’ve been fired.” “Well, hell. Ain’t that like a man? Takes the mayor’s side in this, without even hearing what really happened.” “Forget it, girl. What I have to say to you—” his eyes swept over the other three women behind bars. “All of you—is I have a proposal.” He paused, making sure he had all their attention. “Nellie’s place burned down, and she has nowhere to go. All of you are a burr under my saddle. I can’t have women in my jail, but none of you have a job or a place to stay.” He took off his hat and ran his fingers through his hair. “So, this is the deal. There’s a wagon train right now at Fort Dodge from Independence that’s headed to Santa Fe, New Mexico territory. Now I happen to know there are plenty of men down that way looking for wives.” One of the women gasped. “Marshal, surely you’re not suggesting . . .” “Yes, ma’am I am suggesting. You gals will either get on that wagon train with Nellie here as your chaperone or wait until the circuit judge comes around when he sobers up. He’ll be so blasted hung over, he’s liable to send y’all off to the state prison.” “That’s outrageous. You can’t force us to marry strangers.” Another young, pretty girl clutched the cell bars, her knuckles white. “No, ma’am, you’re probably right. I can’t do that. But what I can do is leave you sitting here until old Judge Bailey makes his appearance. Sometimes we don’t see him for six months.” “I’m willing.” The girl curled up on her cot said, her voice barely above a whisper. From Prisoners of Love: Nellie, A Christmas to Remember

of childbirth,

Mama’s words came to her. “God is with us in good times and bad. Nothing can ever take His love from us. If you ever wonder if it’s enough, remember that God loved you enough to send His Son. There is no greater love known to man.

locations of Sheridan’s cavalry, his artillery, his infantry and his wagon train. Robert stared intently, noting where Sheridan’s lines of entrenchments had been run, and where they stopped. He could see it all…the roads leading to the camp, the place where the Federals could best be attacked. The scene below was like a huge map showing him where to

mommy,

She arrived in Montana after two weeks on boats and trains and wagons to find this played-out convict a decade older than advertised, her first words “I pray there’s enough of you left to make a baby.” “Your mother arrived with grievances,” Dan Dolan used to say, “and plans to send me out with the same.” And so she did after four children, Rye the last, eight years old when his da dropped dead on the steps of a tavern, the very definition of Irish hell: dying walking into a bar.

Most people associate the Nazis with book burning. Everyone has seen on television or the Internet the Dantesque images of students throwing hundreds of books into the fire in the streets and squares of German cities in the 1930s. True funeral pyres of Western civilization, they were a barbaric prelude to the burning of human beings, exactly as the German poet Heinrich Heine described in a visionary way. Much less well-known is the meticulous looting carried out by the Nazis in libraries throughout Europe. Prior to my conversation with Albert, I had heard something about it, but was unaware of both the reasons why this massive theft had taken place or of its size. While the theft of a work of art is usually done out of artistic passion or simple greed, what could have driven the Nazis to transport tons of books in train wagons across Europe? And it was not a selective exercise, no—the books were taken in bulk without any sorting. That is, they were removed without prior knowledge of their value. One particularly striking fact explains the Nazi regime’s interest in Jewish books. According to one of its most influential ideologues, Alfred Rosenberg, it was important for future generations to know the enemy after their final defeat. That is why public and private Jewish libraries were ransacked throughout Europe to fill the shelves of the Institut zur Erforschung der Judenfrage, the Institute for Research on the Jewish Question. In the eyes and most delirious dreams of the Nazis, it was a research institute dedicated to studying a people that was doomed to extinction.

Pitt has always looked in the future and found it full of excitement and adventure. In the 1970s he was a man of the '80s. Now he is a man of the '90s. Like a scout out for a wagon train, Pitt looks over the next hill and tells us what's there. He sees what we'd all like to see in our imaginations.

The horses were well trained and continued their journey without the guidance of their wagon master. When we came to a sharp turn in the road, the horses made the appropriate turn, but the wagon did not.

Even fifteen years earlier, it would have been impossible, since there were very few cars (eight thousand as opposed to fourteen million horses) and fewer drivable roads. With the exception of train travel, the average American rarely ventured more than twelve miles from home, because that was the distance a horse and wagon could comfortably cover from there and back in a day.

Back in my day, before children were encouraged to send pictures of their genitalia to one another via small handheld computers, we actually took the time to get real paper and draw pictures of our genitalia by hand, which we then mailed to one another via a system of wagon trains.

He must make the implements and toys which he can not afford to buy or procure. He must run, adjust and repair all sorts of machinery and farm utensils. His ingenuity and inventiveness are constantly exercised. If the wagon or plow breaks down it must be repaired on the spot, often without the proper tools. This training develops instinctive courage, strong success qualities, and makes him a resourceful man.

Multiple raids on emigrant wagon trains in Utah Territory, both before and weeks after September 11, 1857, demonstrate that the train massacred at Mountain Meadows was not the only one attacked. These assaults were motivated by political wrangling over federal and local rule and tensions between church and state that reached a deadly peak in 1857 but roiled Utah for decades. Modern readers may recognize similar tensions today, not only in Utah but throughout the United States. This jostling for power between Latter-day Saints and federal authority continued long after the massacre. Attempts to wield the case as a political weapon resulted in justice delayed—and justice denied—for the innocent victims of the massacre and their families.

Miss Taggart, it is not my place to call you, but nobody else will,” said the voice that came on the wire, this time; the voice sounded young and too calm. “In another day or two, a disaster’s going to happen here the like of which they’ve never seen, and they won’t be able to hide it any longer, only it will be too late by then, and maybe it’s too late already.” “What is it? Who are you?” “One of your employees of the Minnesota Division, Miss Taggart. In another day or two, the trains will stop running out of here—and you know what that means, at the height of the harvest. At the height of the biggest harvest we’ve ever had. They’ll stop, because we have no cars. The harvest freight cars have not been sent to us this year.” “What did you say?” She felt as if minutes went by between the words of the unnatural voice that did not sound like her own. “The cars have not been sent. Fifteen thousand should have been here by now. As far as I could learn, about eight thousand cars is all we got. I’ve been calling Division Headquarters for a week. They’ve been telling me not to worry. Last time, they told me to mind my own damn business. Every shed, silo, elevator, warehouse, garage and dance hall along the track is filled with wheat. At the Sherman elevators, there’s a line of farmers’ trucks and wagons two miles long, waiting on the road. At Lakewood Station, the square is packed solid and has been for three nights. They keep telling us it’s only temporary, the cars are coming and we’ll catch up. We won’t. There aren’t any cars coming. I’ve called everyone I could. I know, by the way they answer. They know, and not one of them wants to admit it. They’re scared, scared to move or speak or ask or answer. All they’re thinking of is who will be blamed when that harvest rots here around the stations—and not of who’s going to move it. Maybe nobody can, now. Maybe there’s nothing you can do about it, either. But I thought you’re the only person left who’d want to know and that somebody had to tell you.

I’m a good shot with the pistol,” Handel said. “I can hit the side of a barn.

There comes a time when a person has to trust God to do His share.

If I could, I would give you a house full of joy, a life of contentment and a happy family. I would give you flowers at every window and a swing on the porch. I would give you a river with crystal clear water and trees that blossomed one after another so the air around you was always filled with the perfume of a thousand blooms.

To get through these challenges, you need to prepare your wagon train and have the right provisions.

To supply a column of this size, in the depth of winter, was a problem demanding most careful consideration. There was a train of one hundred and sixty-eight wagons and seven ambulances, with two hundred and nineteen drivers and attendants; and a pack-train of four hundred mules cared for by sixty-five expert packers, to follow after the cavalry whenever it should cut loose from the main body. No finer, cleaner-cut expedition was ever known in the annals of the Regular Army.

There’s Tom,” Becky says. He’s been tromping around the city half the day, but I don’t see a speck of mud on him. Though he dresses plain, it always seems he rolls out of bed in the morning with his hair and clothes as neat and ordered as his arguments. We walk over to join him, and he acknowledges us with a slight, perfectly controlled nod. He’s one of the college men, three confirmed bachelors who left Illinois College to join our wagon train west. Compared to the other two, Tom Bigler is a bit of a closed book—one of those big books with tiny print you use as a doorstop or for smashing bugs. And he’s been closing up tighter and tighter since we blew up Uncle Hiram’s gold mine, when Tom negotiated with James Henry Hardwick to get us out of that mess. “How goes the hunt for an office?” I ask. “Not good,” Tom says. “I found one place—only one place—and it’s a cellar halfway up the side of one those mountains.” Being from Illinois, which I gather is flat as a griddle, Tom still thinks anything taller than a tree is a mountain. “Maybe eight foot square, no windows and a dirt floor, and they want a thousand dollars a month for it.” “Is it the cost or the lack of windows that bothers you?” He pauses. Sighs. “Believe it or not, that’s a reasonable price. Everything else I’ve found is worse—five thousand a month for the basement of the Ward Hotel, ten thousand a month for a whole house. The land here is more valuable than anything on it, even gold. I’ve never seen so many people trying to cram themselves into such a small area.” “So it’s the lack of windows.” He gives me a side-eyed glance. “I came to California to make a fortune, but it appears a fortune is required just to get started. I may have to take up employment with an existing firm, like this one.” Peering at us more closely, he says, “I thought you were going to acquire the Joyner house? I mean, I’m glad to see you, but it seems things have gone poorly?” “They’ve gone terribly,” Becky says. “They haven’t gone at all,” I add. “They’ll only release it to Mr. Joyner,” Becky says. Tom’s eyebrows rise slightly. “I did mention that this could be a problem, remember?” “Only a slight one,” I say with more hope than conviction. “Without Mr. Joyner’s signature,” Becky explains, “they’ll sell my wedding cottage at auction. Our options are to buy back what’s ours, which I don’t want to do, or sue to recover it, which is why I’ve come to find you.” If I didn’t know Tom so well, I might miss the slight frown turning his lips. He says, “There’s no legal standing to sue. Andrew Junior is of insufficient age, and both his and Mr. Joyner’s closest male relative would be the family patriarch back in Tennessee. You see, it’s a matter of cov—” “Coverture!” says Becky fiercely. “I know. So what can I do?” “There’s always robbery.” I’m glad I’m not drinking anything, because I’m pretty sure I’d spit it over everyone in range. “Tom!” Becky says. “Are you seriously suggesting—?” “I’m merely outlining your full range of options. You don’t want to buy it back. You have no legal standing to sue for it. That leaves stealing it or letting it go.” This is the Tom we’ve started to see recently. A little angry, maybe a little dangerous. I haven’t made up my mind if I like the change or not. “I’m not letting it go,” Becky says. “Just because a bunch of men pass laws so other men who look just like them can legally steal? Doesn’t mean they should get away with it.” We’ve been noticed; some of the men in the office are eyeing us curiously. “How would you go about stealing it back, Tom?” I ask in a low voice, partly to needle him and partly to find out what he really thinks. He glances around, brows knitting. “I suppose I would get a bunch of men who look like me to pass some laws in my favor and then take it back through legal means.” I laugh in spite of myself. “You’re no help at all,” Becky says.

spoke up quickly. ‘Husband, perhaps Toby should go on your horse and meet the train. You can ride along with Mister Wilkinson and I on the wagon.’ ‘No,’ said Slim Jim. ‘I’ll meet the train. I’m sure we can trust these two fine men with your honor. I’ll see you all

over

Why, Reshi?"The words poured out of Bast in a sudden gush. "Why did you stay there when it was so awful?" Kvothe nodded to himself, as if he had been expecting the question. "Where else was there for me to go, Bast? Everyone I knew was dead." "Not everyone," Bast insisted. "There was Abenthy. You could have gone to him." "Hallowfell was hundreds of miles away, Bast," Kvothe said wearily as he wandered to the other side of the room and moved behind the bar. Hundreds of miles without my father's maps to guide me. Hundreds of miles without wagons to ride or sleep in. Without help of any sort, or money, or shoes. Not an impossible journey, I suppose. But for a young child, still numb with the shock of losing his parents. . . ." Kvothe shook his head. "No. In Tarbean at least I could beg or steal. I'd managed to survive in the forest for a summer, barely. But over the winter?" He shook his head. "I would have starved or frozen todeath." Standing at the bar, Kvothe filled his mug and began to add pinches of spice from several small containers, then walked toward the great stone fireplace, a thoughtful expression on his face. "You're right, of course. Anywhere would have been better than Tarbean." He shrugged, facing the fire. "But we are all creatures of habit. It is far too easy to stay in the familiar ruts we dig for ourselves. Perhaps I even viewed it as fair. My punishment for not being there to help when the Chandrian came. My punishment for not dying when I should have, with the rest of my family." Bast opened his mouth, then closed it and looked down at the tabletop, frowning. Kvothe looked over his shoulder and gave a gentle smile. "I'm not saying it's rational, Bast. Emotions by their very nature are not reasonable things. I don't feel that way now, but back then I did. I remember." He turned back to the fire. "Ben's training has given me a memory so clean and sharp I have to be careful not to cut myself sometimes." Kvothe took a mulling stone from the fire and dropped it into his wooden mug. It sank with a sharp hiss. The smell of searing clove and nutmeg filled the room. Kvothe stirred his cider with a long-handled spoon as he made his way back to the table. "You must also remember that I was not in my right mind. Much of me was still in shock, sleeping if you will. I needed something, or someone, to wake me up." He nodded to Chronicler, who casually shook his writing hand to loosen it, then unstoppered his inkwell. Kvothe leaned back in his seat. "I needed to be reminded of things I had forgotten. I needed a reason to leave. It was years before I met someone who could do those things." He smiled at Chronicler. "Before I met Skarpi.

As he passed the tool wagon Wilbur had brought out that morning from Fort Deveraux he snatched up a pick. “Caleb!” Lily cried, terrified that he meant to destroy her cabin. But he went around the cabin to the land behind it and plunged the pick into the ground with a mighty swing. “Right here!” he bellowed, no longer caring, evidently, that some of his troops were there to witness his fit of temper. “I’m building my house right here!” Lily stared. “But you can’t, Caleb. Someone else has claim to that land.” “The hell I can’t,” he barked back. “I filed before I ever had the misfortune to meet you!” Lily’s eyes went wide. “You’ve claimed the land adjoining mine?” Caleb grinned, but his gaze fairly crackled with fury. “I have indeed.” “Well, I don’t want your house so close by,” Lily fussed, folding her arms again and stomping over to look up into his face. Caleb pointed to the ground. “Get off my land,” he ordered. “Everybody else around here might jump when you give an order, Caleb Halliday,” Lily told him, “but I’m not afraid of you.” “You’d better be,” Caleb drawled, advancing on her so that she was forced to retreat. Lily

At one point, the entire wagon train came to a halt when the soldiers and officers on horseback fell asleep in their saddles. Few words were spoken between the boys on the journey; their thoughts were filled with the voices of those around them. The wounded men sang a song of sorrow to the rhythm of the rain. It was a never-ending song, for when one man died there was another who took his place in the chorus of the suffering. The song served as a cadence for the five thousand who marched by their side. (The Confederate retreat from Gettysburg. July 4, 1863) Excerpt From: Sheila W. Slavich. “Jumpin’ the Rails!.” XlibrisUS, 2016-03-16T04:00:00+00:00. iBooks. This material is protected by copyright.

One of Brown’s best monograph sketches, for example, narrates the tragedy of Charles Stull, a deaf and mute man from Philadelphia who decided to cross the Oregon Trail, alone and on foot, during the peak emigration year of 1852. Stull died of cholera at Castle Creek, just west of Ash Hollow. He was found by the members of a passing wagon train, who examined his body and found $2.75 in his pockets, along with a certificate attesting to his graduation from the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf and Dumb in Philadelphia. I learned from Brown’s account how crowded the trail was that year, and new details about the cholera plagues. Brown also portrayed how early-nineteenth-century educators and philanthropists founded schools for the deaf and circulated beautifully illustrated pamphlets on sign language. Stull was an exemplary product of that era. He was one of the first students at the Philadelphia school for the deaf, and he and his brother, an engraver, published one of the first sign-language manuals, an illustrated broadsheet titled An Alphabet for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb. The

Amos

Just a damn minute,” Caleb barked, bringing her up short with a quick grasp on her elbow. “Where do you think you’re going?” “To my brother’s home,” Lily replied, her chin high. “Kindly unhand me, Major. If you don’t, I’ll scream.” Reluctantly Caleb let go of Lily’s arm. He swept his hat off his head and then put it back on again in a single furious motion. “I want to know what you’re doing here,” he hissed, keeping up with Lily’s short strides easily when she set out for Rupert’s home. Wagons and buggies rattled by on the brick street, and Lily indulged in a secret smile. “I’ve become a woman of means, Caleb,” she said, still walking briskly. By that time he’d taken her valise, so she swung her arms at her sides. “I’m going to buy all the things I need to homestead my land.” “That’s crazy. Who’s going to protect you from Indians and outlaws?” “I am,” Lily answered without pause, though inside she didn’t feel so confident. “I suppose I’ll marry one day, though.” Caleb swore softly. “Fine. Marry anybody you want to,” he snapped. “Thank you,” Lily replied in a dulcet tone. “I will.” She turned onto a side street, and her spirits lifted because she could see Rupert’s small house in the distance. “Tell me where you got the money for this harebrained project!” Caleb demanded. Lily looked up at him out of the corner of her eye. “I sold myself to every man on the post,” she whispered. “I let them do everything you’ve ever done.” Caleb was practically apoplectic. “I’m warning you, Lily Chalmers—” “Of what?” Just as Lily would have entered Rupert’s front gate Caleb caught hold of her again. He dropped the valise to the ground and gripped her by both shoulders. “Tell me.” Lily sighed. “I don’t know exactly where the money came from, Caleb,” she said moderately. “My mother sent it. Apparently her circumstances improved considerably after she got rid of us. Now, since I’ve answered your question—and may I say it was none of your business in the first place—will you stop carrying on in public?” Caleb glowered at her and let go of her arm. “We have to talk.” Lily worked the gate latch. “Why?” “Because when you go in there you’re going to find out that I’ve been here asking questions, that’s why.” Lily’s hand froze in midair. “What?” “I’ve hired a Pinkerton man to look for your sisters, Lily.” Lily was stunned. “I told you—” “That you didn’t want to be obligated. I know. But I wanted to do this for you, and I can afford it, so I went ahead.” Before

Just a damn minute,” Caleb barked, bringing her up short with a quick grasp on her elbow. “Where do you think you’re going?” “To my brother’s home,” Lily replied, her chin high. “Kindly unhand me, Major. If you don’t, I’ll scream.” Reluctantly Caleb let go of Lily’s arm. He swept his hat off his head and then put it back on again in a single furious motion. “I want to know what you’re doing here,” he hissed, keeping up with Lily’s short strides easily when she set out for Rupert’s home. Wagons and buggies rattled by on the brick street, and Lily indulged in a secret smile. “I’ve become a woman of means, Caleb,” she said, still walking briskly. By that time he’d taken her valise, so she swung her arms at her sides. “I’m going to buy all the things I need to homestead my land.” “That’s crazy. Who’s going to protect you from Indians and outlaws?” “I am,” Lily answered without pause, though inside she didn’t feel so confident. “I suppose I’ll marry one day, though.” Caleb swore softly. “Fine. Marry anybody you want to,” he snapped. “Thank you,” Lily replied in a dulcet tone. “I will.” She turned onto a side street, and her spirits lifted because she could see Rupert’s small house in the distance. “Tell me where you got the money for this harebrained project!” Caleb demanded. Lily looked up at him out of the corner of her eye. “I sold myself to every man on the post,” she whispered. “I let them do everything you’ve ever done.” Caleb was practically apoplectic. “I’m warning you, Lily Chalmers—” “Of what?” Just as Lily would have entered Rupert’s front gate Caleb caught hold of her again. He dropped the valise to the ground and gripped her by both shoulders. “Tell me.” Lily sighed. “I don’t know exactly where the money came from, Caleb,” she said moderately. “My mother sent it. Apparently her circumstances improved considerably after she got rid of us. Now, since I’ve answered your question—and may I say it was none of your business in the first place—will you stop carrying on in public?” Caleb glowered at her and let go of her arm. “We have to talk.” Lily worked the gate latch. “Why?” “Because when you go in there you’re going to find out that I’ve been here asking questions, that’s why.” Lily

keep me from ridin’ trail. But you’re acting

beautiful granddaughter at his side, guarding it like a pair of faithful watchdogs. Although they were all nearly at the end of their tether, Jim roused the camp again before dawn. Using a span of oxen, and with much shouting and cracking of long whips, they heaved the overturned wagon back on to its wheels. The robust vehicle had suffered little damage, and within a few hours they had repacked its scattered load. Jim knew that they must leave the battlefield at once. In the heat of the sun the corpses would very soon putrefy, and, with the stench of their rotting, sickness and disease would come. At his orders they inspanned every other wagon in the train. Then Smallboy and the other drivers fired the long whips and the oxen trundled the vehicles out of the gruesome laager and into the open grassland. They set up camp that evening among the deserted thatched huts of the Nguni town, surrounded by the vast herds of humpbacked cattle, with the piles of ivory securely enclosed within the wagon laager. The next morning, after breakfast, Jim summoned all his men to the indaba. He wanted to explain to them his future plans, and to tell them where he would lead them next. First he asked Tegwane to explain how the Nguni used their cattle to carry the ivory when they were on the march. ‘Tell us how they place the loads, and secure them to the backs of the animals,’ Jim ordered. ‘That I do not know,’ Tegwane admitted. ‘I have only watched their advance from afar.’ ‘Smallboy will be able to work out the harness for himself,’ Jim decided, ‘but it would have been better to use a method to which the cattle are accustomed.’ Then he turned to the small group of herd-boys and said, ‘Can you men’ – they liked to be called men and they had earned the right at the barricades – ‘can you men take care of so many?’ They considered the vast herds of cattle that were scattered down the full length of the valley. ‘They are not so very many,’ said the eldest, who was the spokesman. ‘We can herd many more than that,’ said another. ‘We have vanquished the Nguni in battle,’ squeaked Izeze, smallest and cheekiest of the boys, his voice not yet broken. ‘We can take care of their cattle, and their women also, when we capture them.

One of the most ambitious men to exploit the timber trade was Hugh F. McDanield, a railroad builder and tie contractor who had come to Fayetteville along with the Frisco. He bought thousands of acres of land within hauling distance of the railroad and sent out teams of men to cut the timber. By the mid-1880s, after a frenzy of cutting in south Washington County, he turned his gaze to the untapped fortune of timber on the steep hillsides of southeast Washington County and southern Madison County, territory most readily accessed along a wide valley long since leveled by the east fork of White River. Mr. McDanield gathered a group of backers and the state granted a charter September 4, 1886, giving authority to issue capital stock valued at $1.5 million, which was the estimated cost to build a rail line through St. Paul and on to Lewisburg, which was a riverboat town on the Arkansas River near Morrilton. McDanield began surveys while local businessman J. F. Mayes worked with property owners to secure rights of way. “On December 4, 1886, a switch was installed in the Frisco main line about a mile south of Fayetteville, and the spot was named Fayette Junction.” Within six months, 25 miles of track had been laid east by southeast through Baldwin, Harris, Elkins, Durham, Thompson, Crosses, Delaney, Patrick, Combs, and finally St. Paul. Soon after, in 1887, the Frisco bought the so-called “Fayetteville and Little Rock” line from McDanield. It was estimated that in the first year McDanield and partners shipped out more than $2,000,000 worth of hand-hacked white oak railroad ties at an approximate value of twenty-five cents each. Mills ran day and night as people arrived “by train, wagon, on horseback, even afoot” to get a piece of the action along the new track, commonly referred to as the “St. Paul line.” Saloons, hotels, banks, stores, and services from smithing to tailoring sprang up in rail stop communities.

Athletes and musicians often refer to being in “the zone”—that mystical place where their inner critic is silenced and they completely inhabit the moment, where the thinking is clear and the motions are precise. Often, mental models help get them there. Just as George Lucas liked to imagine his company as a wagon train headed west—its passengers full of purpose, part of a team, unwavering in their pursuit of their destination—the coping mechanisms used by Pixar and Disney Animation’s directors, producers, and writers draw heavily on visualization. By imagining their problems as familiar pictures, they are able to keep their wits about them when the pressures of not knowing shake their confidence.

You work for 30, 40 years. 40 freaking years getting in the car, driving through traffic, dealing with BS, driving home, and taking the kids to buy sneakers?” I realized April had come over. How long she had been listening, I didn't know. “ And you don't want all that?”, She asked me. “Maybe . Someday,” I said. “I don't even know if I'll go to college, but my mom's looking at an MBA for me, and I go along, mostly. Why? Because I care about business? No, because everyone's on me about my future. Got to get the good grades so you can get a good college so you can get a good business school so you can get on with some big firmware you Shuffle papers and tap on the keyboard That's it, man, that's your life so you get old and wonder what the hell you did with your life. That's not life. Not for a man, anyway.” April cocked an eyebrow. “The way you described it, it doesn't sound like life for anyone. That won't be my life. You leave it all the good stuff: friends and family. Kids. The things you love to do." I waved my hand, dismissing it all. “There used to be an adventure. You know? Going west in a wagon train, or going to war, or exploring some place no human being had ever been before. Now what do we have? Look at Sven. Look at that guy. He's my age, look at his life. Then look at mine or Jalil’s or your’s.” April barked out a laugh. “He can barely talk because someone rammed a sword through his mouth. “ I nodded. “You know the difference between him and me? We're both about 16. But he's a man. I'm a boy.” April made a face, angry, dismissive, frustrated. “What is it with you guys? Is it the testosterone? You know, David, it's the dawn of the 21st century and you live in the richest, most powerful Nation on Earth where there's almost no one starving and no one's slave and no one invading to murder and pillage and rape. And finally, finally after thousands of years of men slaughtering men, women, and children over nonsense, we have a few places on Earth where there's a little piece, a little decency a few places where most people get to be born and live their lives without total horror being rained down on them, and your reaction is, ‘this has to stop!