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Show As I mentioned, the railroad crossed our land. We had pasturage on both sides of the track and we usually herded our livestock carefully across when we grazed them on the northwest part of our claim. There was no fence along the San Pedro right-of-way except where we had enclosed our Experiment Farm and some other parts of fields. Once in a while a freight train stopped in front of the store and an obliging train crew unloaded groceries, stock feed and seed for us instead of hauling them a mile up the track to unload at Nada "station." Stopping that way between sidings may not have been the safest thing in the world but if officials heard of it they winked at it-western railroads had a tradition of encouraging settlers along their tracks, especially when they could accommodate a "center of distribution" and a post office such as we had. One serious difficulty was that there was no unloading platform, and a brakeman less agreeable than the conductor responsible for the kind act would often toss the sacks of grain and other heavy articles out the boxcar door to drop in the gravel well below even the rails. Sacks might get torn or split and wheat and oats spilled. In a rainy spring delicious shoots of grain sprang up, enticing to animals after the dry sagebrush often cropped down by a winter of grazing. However it happened, the two colts sneaked off from their parents browsing safely, or so we thought, well off toward the east. The venturesome youngsters went to the side of the railroad grade to feed on succulent green plants growing from spilled grain. I didn't see them come. Afterward, hating myself for reading a magazine while they got in danger, I couldn't understand how my uneasiness stirred too late in me. Probably I heard the train whistle down the track for Hot Springs crossing and I went to the front door- |