McPACKEN was not much of a name for a town, but it was the name of that town. Doubtless it was good enough for what it designated, for there is no question that there was a certain dry-salt substantiality in the sound, suggestive of corned beef and cabbage, with such concomitant comforts as railroaders especially favor, and road-weary men of the range swing down from dusty saddles to enjoy.
The town lay close by the sprawling Arkansas River, colloquially called the Arkansaw, at a point where the Santa Fe trail of earlier days crossed that stream of deceptive shallows and wide-spreading bars of silt-white sand. Now another Santa Fe trail ran past its door, a trail wood-girded and steel-bound, whose roaring caravans made echoes among its planked buildings, trailing scents of alluring opulence out of their precious freight, rushing eastward from the orange groves of distant California.
Other scents, true, streamed from less romantic trains which jolted and thumped through the town with
