It
might have prided itself, had it any civic sense whatever, upon its
aloofness. It stood apart from the rest of the world, at a safe
distance from any of its rival settlements, even drawn apart as though
distrustfully from its own railroad station which baked and blistered
in the sun a good half-mile to the west. Grown up here haphazardly
long before the "Gap" had been won through by the "iron trail," it
ignored the beckoning of the glistening rails and refused to extend
itself toward the traffic artery.
More than all this, Red Creek gave the impression, not in the least
incorrect, of falling apart into two watchful sections which eyed each
other suspiciously, being cynically and unsociably inclined. Its main
street was as wide as Van Ness Avenue and down the middle of it, like a
border line between two hostile camps, sprawled a stream which shared
its name with the town.
The banks here and there were the brick-red of a soil whose chief
mineral was iron; here and there were screened by willows. There were
two insecure-looking bridges across which men went infrequently.
For the spirit which had brooded over the birth of Red Creek when a
sheepman from the north and a cow-man from the south had set their
shacks opposite each other, lived on now; long after the old feuds were
dead and the whole of the grazing lands had been won over to the cattle
raisers, a new basis for quarrels had offered itself at Red Creek's
need.
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