The Wagon Train

A bunch of pioneers started up a wagon train, and set off in search of untamed territory. "Yee-ha!" most of them remarked.

But no sooner had they set off than they came to a wide blue river.

"Oh no," sighed one. "Not a wide blue river! Well, that's that plan scuppered! I'm not getting my wagon wet!" And he turned his wagon around and returned to the place where they had started.

The other pioneers laughed at this, and drove their wagons through the wide blue river, and rode on until they came to the edge of a desert.

"Darn it!" spat another of their number. "Might have guessed we'd run into a desert, look at all that sand!" and he turned his wagon around without further explanation.

They crossed the desert, and on their way a number of pioneers turned around – frightened of the spiders and the snakes and some of the larger cacti. But after they'd crossed the desert the wagon train – which was getting steadily smaller – ran into another wagon train coming the other way.

"We've had trouble with the indigenous population," this second wagon train explained.

"Well that's it then!" sighed the driver of one of the few remaining wagons. "I'm not getting mixed up with politics!" And he turned his wagon around as well, joined the others and persuaded further others to join them.

In the end there were only two wagons left, and they wound their way into the mountains. But then it started to snow and one of them had to give up.

"Don't mind the river," he told the last pioneer. "Don't mind the desert or the snakes, I can handle the cacti and the locals. Why, I'm even partial to the occasional harmonica tune, but this snow is gonna play havoc with my complexion."

So he turned around and headed back the way he had come, and eventually returned to the town where they had started; and he was reunited with all the other folks who'd dropped out of the wagon train, and they took jobs in the town and married and watched their children grow up etc.

But all of them – whenever they met, as they grew older and less ambitious – all of them wondered what had happened to the last man on the wagon train.

Then one day, many, many years later they saved up their money and rode – all of them – out on the new railroad to the far side of the mountains. And when they'd crossed the mountains they came to a town and booked into the hotel, and went to the bar and asked about their friend.

"Did you ever hear," they asked the bartender, "of a man about a six feet tall, who rode a dusty wagon that was pulled by a black and a white horse; who wore a hat with a snakebite in the brim and had cactus spikes in his wagon wheels, and was never afraid of deep water, or snow, and gave his name as Mr Charles Foskett of Nuneaton?"

"Sure," said the bartender. "Injuns got him!"

The visitors sighed.

"Well, that's that mystery settled," chuckled one. "Let's just thank God that we did the right thing and turned round. For we have all led full and vigorous lives – perhaps a little short of adventure – But just think of poor Charlie, lying dead in those mountains all these years."

"Phew! You kidding me?" the bartender laughed. "Injuns got him yesterday! Up until then he was running the whorehouse!"