MacAllister

Duff ordered his men forward. With fixed bayonets, they rushed the Egyptians. The predawn darkness was illuminated by the flash of a thousand and more rifles. Bullets whizzed by Duff’s ear, some of them so close that they made popping sounds. Men to either side of him screamed in pain or fell silently as they were hit. All the while, above the bang and whiz of rifles and bullets, above the deep-throated yells of men in desperate battle, could be heard the sound of the pipes.

The charge continued until the British and Egyptian lines melded. The British soldiers were armed with Martini-Henry rifles, to which were attached bayonets, and they made frightful use of them until their blades were running red with the blood of the hapless Egyptians, who had no bayonets and thus were ill equipped for the hand-to-hand fighting that developed.

Duff, driven by adrenaline, leaped over the parapet and into a trench filled with Egyptian soldiers. Because he was an officer he was armed not with the Martini-Henri Rifle but with the Enfield Mark 1 pistol. Using his six-shot revolver, he killed six of the ten Egyptians who were in the trench. The other four, without regard to the fact that Duff was now out of ammunition, leaped out of the trench and ran.

The pipes were still playing, but one of them seemed badly out of tune and Duff could hear none of the drone pipes but only the high, screeching whistle.

The high screeching whistle awakened him, and sitting up in the dark car, Duff realized that it was not the pipes he was hearing, but the whistle of the train. He was not in North Africa, he was in America, on a train going mile after mile after endless mile. Just how large was this country anyway? He had no idea America, or anyplace in the world, could be as large as this magnificent country was.

Closing his eyes, he drifted back to sleep, but this time, thankfully, it was deep and dreamless.

After days of passing through towns that were so small they scarcely deserved to be called a town, his arrival in Denver proved to be a most pleasant surprise. Every other town since St. Louis was so small that the engine and last car of the train, while at rest in the depot, stretched nearly from one end of the town to the other. For the most part they had been windy, desolate-looking places with low, featureless buildings. But Denver was actually a city, with buildings of brick and stone, or wood that was painted and glistening in the sun. The depot was a large, three-story building, huge and impressive, and other trains either sat in the station or arrived and departed on tracks that fanned out in all directions like the spokes on a wagon wheel.

From Denver, Duff would board his final train, the one that would take him to the town of MacCallister. But he learned, when checking the schedule, that the train to MacCallister would not leave until nine o’clock the following morning. Duff was going to have to find a hotel room for the night—but the thought of spending the night in Denver was not daunting. In fact, he was looking forward to it.

“I’m sorry, sir,” the hotel clerk said. “But we are completely filled.”

With a frustrated sigh, Duff ran his hand through his hair. “This is the third hotel I have been to, and not one with a vacant room. Is it always this difficult to find lodging in this city?”

“I am afraid that you have come at a bad time, sir. Our state legislature is in assembly, and legislators from all over the state have come for the session. That always fills the hotels. I doubt there is any hotel in the city with a vacant room.”

“Very well,” Duff said. “I suppose I can try to make myself comfortable in the depot.”

“I know where you might find a room, though being a gentleman as you are, it might not be a room that would be to your liking.”

“Sure’n where would that be?” Duff asked. “I’m that tired that ’twould not take too fancy a room to suit me tonight.”

“Many of the saloons have rooms upstairs. You might inquire at one of them.”

“A saloon then? Aye, I will try.”

The bartender was pouring the residue from abandoned whiskey glasses back into a bottle when Duff stepped up to the bar. He pulled a soggy cigar butt from one glass, laid the butt aside, then poured the whiskey back into the bottle. Duff winced as he saw what the bartender was doing, but he wasn’t here to drink, he was here to find a room.

“What will it be, friend?” the bartender asked.

“I’m told one might find a room here,” Duff said. “Have you a room to let? Or have I been misinformed?”

“No, you ain’t been misinformed. You want it with, or without?”

“With or without what?”

“Are you kidding me, Mister? With or without a woman.”

“I have no wish to share my room with a woman.”

“The room will be six dollars.”

“Six dollars?” Duff replied in surprise. “That’s quite expensive, isn’t it?”

“If the girls used the room for their customers, we could make three, maybe four times that,” the bartender said. “Six dollars, take it or leave it.”

Duff had been on the train for a week, and the thought of a real bed, in a non-moving room, was very attractive to him. He nodded.

“Very well, I will pay the six dollars.”

The bartender held out his hand, and when Duff gave him the money, he said, “It’s upstairs.”

“Which room?”

“It doesn’t matter,” the bartender replied.

“The key?” Duff asked.

The bartender laughed. “Key? What makes you think there is a key? There ain’t no key. Just go on in. If there’s a man and woman in there, then just keep openin’ doors ’till you come to one that is empty.”

“I see.”

“You might try the first one to your left up at the head of the stairs. That’s the room Suzie normally uses, and I