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Updated: May 31, 2025
The very air about Springvale was full of tradition. The town had been from the earliest times a landmark of the old Santa Fé trail. When the freighters and plainsmen left the village and climbed to the top of the slope and set their faces to the west there lay before them only the wilderness wastes.
"Yes, an' them northeast winds hard this spring," said another. "No snow on the uplands." "Holley seen a dry spell comin'. Wal, we can drift along without freighters. There's grass an' water enough here, even if it doesn't rain." "Sure, but there ain't none across the river." "Never was, in early season. An' if there was it'd be sheeped off."
There were the ranchmen at intervals of twenty, fifty and a hundred miles, who sold to the pilgrims supplies, such as canned goods, playing cards, whiskey of the vilest type, and traded worn-out cattle, doctored to look well for a few days and then give out, thus cheating freighters and pilgrims alike.
Could these silent bluffs of sand but unfold the butchery and unspeakable outrages inflicted on innocent men, women and children, could the trail through the valley of the Platte, and even more dangerous trail of the Smoky Hill give up its secrets, it would reveal a dark page in the history of our Government, which was directly responsible for a great deal of it; responsible in so far as sending unscrupulous peace commissioners to the different agencies to make treaties of peace with tribes of Indians, and who kept them just long enough to become liberally supplied with provisions, clothing, guns, ammunition and whiskey, then ravish and murder in the most diabolical manner pilgrims and freighters alike.
The area had been broken into smaller sections. The Venus space station handled ninety per cent of the traffic into and out of Venusport. It was a refueling stop for the jet liners and space freighters bound for the outer planets, and for those returning to Earth. Some ships went directly to Venusport for heavy overhaul or supplies, but the station was established primarily for quick turn arounds.
Here, skippers of rocket ships, bound for destinations in deep space, could find hands willing to sign on their dirty freighters despite low pay and poor working conditions. No questions were asked here. Along Spaceman's Row, hard men played a grim game of survival. Loring and Mason paid the driver, got out, and walked down the busy street.
Freighters, weather-bound, came to the doors as we passed by with our jangle of bells and would raise a somewhat chechaco pride in our breasts by remarking: "You don't seem to care what weather you travel in!"
At length a faint howl rose from ahead and Lisle stopped and listened intently. The sound was repeated more plainly, and was followed by a confused snarling, the clamor of quarreling dogs. "Malamutes; the freighters can't have started yet with their sledges," he said to Crestwick, who was holding on to him. "I don't think they can be more than half a mile off."
They own tremendous copper mines in Alaska, but they can't seem to get the right kind of flux to smelt their ore up there; so they're going to freight it down to their smelter in Tacoma." "I see. But how do you work the game to pay your office rent?" "Why, that's very simple, Mr. Peasley. Their traffic manager merely calls me up and tells me to find two ore freighters for him.
But the practical man of the earth was eying the air-ship in increasing amazement. For it was truly a ship; a huge vessel wonderfully like one of the old-fashioned freighters which used to sail the seas of the earth. What was more, it had four tall, sloping masts, each spread with something remarkably like canvas; and that whole incredible hulk was actually swinging in mid air!
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