People filled the boardwalks and clogged the streets beneath the gaily colored banners that festooned every pole and post almost as far as the eye could see. Their voices were lifted in bright chatter, and laughter continually rippled through the crowd as vendors moved in and out of the throng hawking refreshments that included everything from candied apples to cold beer. Dust rose up in huge whorls around them, and the rain the promoters had feared would appear to mar the day had not materialized. A carnival atmosphere reigned over the proceedings as the crowd continued to swell in size and the appointed hour of the demonstration neared.

Company men lounged around the strange contraption that was parked at one end of the street where it held the center of attention, roped respectfully off from the masses that surged around it trying to get just a little bit closer for a better look. It looked like a wagon of the type that crossed the plains, square and box-like, and yet it did not look like one. There were no animals to pull it. Masts and sails protruded upwards from a flat wooden deck where the canvas top should have been. It was a ship with wheels, a prairie schooner in the truest sense of the word. It was, the placard that stood prominently before it announced, the latest thing in hauling freight across the great plains. The greatest boon to freight hauling since the invention of the wheel itself!

The two company men, young and alert, well dressed in baggy black pants, vest, suit coats, trimmed with white paper collars and cuffs, politely answered questions members of the crowd put to them. Yes, they acknowledged, this had indeed been tried before. There had even been limited success around 1860, when several of them had traveled the Smoky Hill road leading to Denver. But, they reminded their listening public, that had been over seven years earlier! Seven years! Why this frigate had all the innovations and improvements that modern science and engineering had developed over those years. They acknowledged too that the train was a coming thing, spreading Westward with vigor. But this new freight wagon would be hauling to places that the railroads would not reach for years. And speed, why it could cover fifty miles in a day! In only a few months those sail-bedecked freight wagons would be as common a sight in towns clear across the plains as horses standing at hitching posts were now.

A low ripple of laughter started at a far corner of the crowd nearest the saloon and built into a roar, cutting off the company man's speech. Having deciding to add a little more life to the proceedings, a group of determined men dragged both piano and piano player out of the saloon and onto the broad boardwalk, momentarily diverting attention from the main event. The man at the piano did not seem to mind his abrupt change in locale as he continued bashing out a gay little tune on his piano though both he and it were in motion. Brittle notes rang out sourly in loud and strident discord, almost in protest, as either piano or seated piano player was pushed a little too hard and his hands went out of line with the keyboard. The human contents of the saloon spilled out into the street like an overturned keg of beer, following behind the piano. Bubbling with the enthusiasm of the carnival atmosphere and the added impetus of too much to drink, they launched into a loud, if not tuneful, rendition of a salty old sailing song. The crowd swayed in rhythm and the song spread until even those who did not know the words were humming along in fine spirits.

Even then, the crowd continued to swell in size as the saloon girls, now out and wandering freely through the crowd, tried to coax some of the men back inside for another drink or other favors. A stooped old man appeared from somewhere with a fiddle and joined the piano player on the boardwalk, playing fast and brassy sea songs along with a periodic rendition of "Buffalo Gals" or "Clementine."

The company men lounged back against the windwagon, resuming their original positions, glancing complacently over the crowd. That was the whole idea behind the promotion. To get the local folks happy with the freight line, so happy that they would trust their freight to it on its maiden voyage. Later, the rolling ship would be christened. Soon after that it would be launched on its demonstration run. It would be a proud and jubilant day for the K and J Overland Freight Company.

Dressed much the same as the company men in the street below, in baggy uncreased pants and linen shirt with its pointed paper collar stabbing him in the throat each time he turned his head, Elias McPherson stood on the balcony of his hotel room, overlooking the milling throng below, with his granddaughter. Perched on his balding head at a rakish angle was a black bowler.

A robust man with well-rounded muscular shoulders, he stood only two inches taller than his granddaughter's five foot three inches. He wasn't enjoying the festivities, nor was he impressed with them. Pulling his American Horologe watch from his vest pocket where it hung at the end of a Dickens chain, he popped open the case, glancing thoughtfully down at the spidery hands that moved around the face. Twenty minutes left until the demonstration was due to take place. He frowned sourly, his bushy white eyebrows knit together pensively, when he closed the watchcase and slipped it back in his pocket.

"They can't pay me enough to compensate for the humiliation of having my name even remotely associated with that ... that thing," Elias muttered, his bright, steel gray eyes flickering continually over the crowd below in quiet, unyielding disapproval.

Emma laid a long slender hand, gloved in white lace, on her grandfather's arm. "Gramps, you must not take these things so seriously," she tried to placate him.

"That's the only way to take them," Elias grumped. "They ask for my ideas, my recommendations, take damn few of them, and then turn this into a circus to boot! Why, the way it's built, they'll be lucky if that contraption will hold together long enough to roll out of town. They didn't even add the special brake I designed. Once that thing gets moving, what they have on there now would have about as much chance of stopping it as a cowboy on a good horse trying to rope a train."

"Now, Gramps," Emma began soothingly, "it can't be that bad."

Elias shifted his gaze to his granddaughter and immediately his expression softened. Since she had been a squalling baby, through her childhood of bright red pigtails and a face covered with freckles, to now when she stood beside him, a stunning young woman, her thick red hair caught up in a tumble of soft curls, her beautiful heart-shaped face framing direct green eyes and her fair cheeks touched with rose petals, she could have asked for anything from him and gotten it.

But Emma had asked for nothing and, while she seemed happy, Elias sometimes worried about her, Emma was twenty-two, and not yet married. Young, wild and fiery, Emma's mother had not been quite seventeen when Emma had been born. Though Emma had inherited a large proportion of her mother's quick temper, her steadiness she had inherited from her father, Elias's son.