Then you had the desert that wasn’t really a desert. Lots of bones of pilgrims’ cattle though, and now and then along the way, a piano thrown out from a wagon, or a cupboard, as the oxen weakened at their task. Drought was the worst thing there. It was a mighty queer thing to see a black piano in the half-true desert. Hey, John Cole, what in the name of tarnation that piano doing there in the dust? Must be looking for a saloon, he says.
