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While Ray was getting his train on to a side track, Mrs.
Kronborg strolled off to examine the post-office and sta-
tion house; these, with the water tank, made up the town.
The station agent "batched" and raised chickens. He ran
out to meet Mrs. Kronborg, clutched at her feverishly,
and began telling her at once how lonely he was and what
bad luck he was having with his poultry. She went to his
chicken yard with him, and prescribed for gapes.
Wassiwappa seemed a dreary place enough to people who
looked for verdure, a brilliant place to people who liked
color. Beside the station house there was a blue-grass plot,
protected by a red plank fence, and six fly-bitten box-elder
trees, not much larger than bushes, were kept alive by
frequent hosings from the water plug. Over the windows
some dusty morning-glory vines were trained on strings.
All the country about was broken up into low chalky hills,
which were so intensely white, and spotted so evenly with
sage, that they looked like white leopards crouching. White
dust powdered everything, and the light was so intense
that the station agent usually wore blue glasses. Behind
the station there was a water course, which roared in flood
time, and a basin in the soft white rock where a pool of
alkali water flashed in the sun like a mirror. The agent
looked almost as sick as his chickens, and Mrs. Kronborg
at once invited him to lunch with her party. He had, he
confessed, a distaste for his own cooking, and lived mainly
on soda crackers and canned beef. He laughed apologetic-
ally when Mrs. Kronborg said she guessed she'd look about
for a shady place to eat lunch.
She walked up the track to the water tank, and there, in
the narrow shadows cast by the uprights on which the
tank stood, she found two tramps. They sat up and
stared at her, heavy with sleep. When she asked them
where they were going, they told her "to the coast." They
rested by day and traveled by night; walked the ties unless
they could steal a ride, they said; adding that "these
Western roads were getting strict." Their faces were
blistered, their eyes blood-shot, and their shoes looked fit
only for the trash pile.
"I suppose you're hungry?" Mrs. Kronborg asked. "I
suppose you both drink?" she went on thoughtfully, not
censoriously.
The huskier of the two hoboes, a bushy, bearded fellow,
rolled his eyes and said, "I wonder?" But the other, who
was old and spare, with a sharp nose and watery eyes,
sighed. "Some has one affliction, some another," he said.
Mrs. Kronborg reflected. "Well," she said at last, "you
can't get liquor here, anyway. I am going to ask you to
vacate, because I want to have a little picnic under this
tank for the freight crew that brought me along. I wish I
had lunch enough to provide you, but I ain't. The station
agent says he gets his provisions over there at the post-
office store, and if you are hungry you can get some canned
stuff there." She opened her handbag and gave each of
the tramps a half-dollar.
The old man wiped his eyes with his forefinger. "Thank
'ee, ma'am. A can of tomatters will taste pretty good to me.
I wasn't always walkin' ties; I had a good job in Cleve-
land before--"
The hairy tramp turned on him fiercely. "Aw, shut up
on that, grandpaw! Ain't you got no gratitude? What do
you want to hand the lady that fur?"
The old man hung his head and turned away. As he
went off, his comrade looked after him and said to Mrs.
Kronborg: "It's true, what he says. He had a job in the
car shops; but he had bad luck." They both limped away
toward the store, and Mrs. Kronborg sighed. She was not
afraid of tramps. She always talked to them, and never
turned one away. She hated to think how many of them
there were, crawling along the tracks over that vast coun-
try.
Her reflections were cut short by Ray and Giddy and
Thea, who came bringing the lunch box and water bottles.
Although there was not shadow enough to accommodate
all the party at once, the air under the tank was distinctly
cooler than the surrounding air, and the drip made a pleas-
ant sound in that breathless noon. The station agent ate
as if he had never been fed before, apologizing every time
he took another piece of fried chicken. Giddy was una-
bashed before the devilled eggs of which he had spoken so
scornfully last night. After lunch the men lit their pipes
and lay back against the uprights that supported the tank.
"This is the sunny side of railroading, all right," Giddy
drawled luxuriously.
"You fellows grumble too much," said Mrs. Kronborg
as she corked the pickle jar. "Your job has its drawbacks,
but it don't tie you down. Of course there's the risk; but
I believe a man's watched over, and he can't be hurt on
the railroad or anywhere else if it's intended he shouldn't
be."
Giddy laughed. "Then the trains must be operated by
fellows the Lord has it in for, Mrs. Kronborg. They figure
it out that a railroad man's only due to last eleven years;
then it's his turn to be smashed."
"That's a dark Providence, I don't deny," Mrs. Kron-
borg admitted. "But there's lots of things in life that's
hard to understand."
"I guess!" murmured Giddy, looking off at the spotted
white hills.
Ray smoked in silence, watching Thea and her mother
clear away the lunch. He was thinking that Mrs. Kron-
borg had in her face the same serious look that Thea had;
only hers was calm and satisfied, and Thea's was intense
and questioning. But in both it was a large kind of look,
that was not all the time being broken up and convulsed
by trivial things. They both carried their heads like Indian
women, with a kind of noble unconsciousness. He got so
tired of women who were always nodding and jerking;
apologizing, deprecating, coaxing, insinuating with their
heads.
When Ray's party set off again that afternoon the sun
beat fiercely into the cupola, and Thea curled up in one of
the seats at the back of the car and had a nap.
As the short twilight came on, Giddy took a turn in the
cupola, and Ray came down and sat with Thea on the rear
platform of the caboose and watched the darkness come
in soft waves over the plain. They were now about thirty
miles from Denver, and the mountains looked very near.
The great toothed wall behind which the sun had gone
down now separated into four distinct ranges, one behind
the other. They were a very pale blue, a color scarcely
stronger than wood smoke, and the sunset had left bright
streaks in the snow-filled gorges. In the clear, yellow-
streaked sky the stars were coming out, flickering like
newly lighted lamps, growing steadier and more golden as
the sky darkened and the land beneath them fell into com-
plete shadow. It was a cool, restful darkness that was
not black or forbidding, but somehow open and free; the
night of high plains where there is no moistness or misti-
ness in the atmosphere.
Ray lit his pipe. "I never get tired of them old stars,
Thee. I miss 'em up in Washington and Oregon where it's
misty. Like 'em best down in Mother Mexico, where they
have everything their own way. I'm not for any country
where the stars are dim." Ray paused and drew on his
pipe. "I don't know as I ever really noticed 'em much till
that first year I herded sheep up in Wyoming. That was
the year the blizzard caught me."
"And you lost all your sheep, didn't you, Ray?" Thea
spoke sympathetically. "Was the man who owned them
nice about it?"
"Yes, he was a good loser. But I didn't get over it for
a long while. Sheep are so damned resigned. Sometimes,
to this day, when I'm dog-tired, I try to save them sheep
all night long. It comes kind of hard on a boy when he first
finds out how little he is, and how big everything else is."
Thea moved restlessly toward him and dropped her chin
on her hand, looking at a low star that seemed to rest just
on the rim of the earth. "I don't see how you stood it. I
don't believe I could. I don't see how people can stand it
to get knocked out, anyhow!" She spoke with such fierce-
ness that Ray glanced at her in surprise. She was sitting
on the floor of the car, crouching like a little animal about
to spring.
"No occasion for you to see," he said warmly. "There'll
always be plenty of other people to take the knocks for
you."
"That's nonsense, Ray." Thea spoke impatiently and
leaned lower still, frowning at the red star. "Everybody's
up against it for himself, succeeds or fails--himself."
"In one way, yes," Ray admitted, knocking the sparks
from his pipe out into the soft darkness that seemed to
flow like a river beside the car. "But when you look at
it another way, there are a lot of halfway people in this
world who help the winners win, and the failers fail. If a
man stumbles, there's plenty of people to push him down.
But if he's like `the youth who bore,' those same people
are foreordained to help him along. They may hate to,
worse than blazes, and they may do a lot of cussin' about
it, but they have to help the winners and they can't dodge
it. It's a natural law, like what keeps the big clock up
there going, little wheels and big, and no mix-up." Ray's
hand and his pipe were suddenly outlined against the sky.
"Ever occur to you, Thee, that they have to be on time
close enough to MAKE TIME? The Dispatcher up there must
have a long head." Pleased with his similitude, Ray went
back to the lookout. Going into Denver, he had to keep a
sharp watch.
Giddy came down, cheerful at the prospect of getting
into port, and singing a new topical ditty that had come up
from the Santa Fe by way of La Junta. Nobody knows
who makes these songs; they seem to follow events auto-
matically. Mrs. Kronborg made Giddy sing the whole
twelve verses of this one, and laughed until she wiped her
eyes. The story was that of Katie Casey, head dining-
room girl at Winslow, Arizona, who was unjustly dis-
charged by the Harvey House manager. Her suitor, the
yardmaster, took the switchmen out on a strike until she
was reinstated. Freight trains from the east and the west
piled up at Winslow until the yards looked like a log-jam.
The division superintendent, who was in California, had to
wire instructions for Katie Casey's restoration before he
could get his trains running. Giddy's song told all this with
much detail, both tender and technical, and after each of
the dozen verses came the refrain:--
"Oh, who would think that Katie Casey owned the Santa Fe?
But it really looks that way,
The dispatcher's turnin' gray,
All the crews is off their pay;
She can hold the freight from Albuquerq' to Needles any
day;
The division superintendent, he come home from Monterey,
Just to see if things was pleasin' Katie Ca--a--a--sey."
Thea laughed with her mother and applauded Giddy.
Everything was so kindly and comfortable; Giddy and
Ray, and their hospitable little house, and the easy-going
country, and the stars. She curled up on the seat again
with that warm, sleepy feeling of the friendliness of the
world--which nobody keeps very long, and which she
was to lose early and irrevocably.
XVII
The summer flew by. Thea was glad when Ray
Kennedy had a Sunday in town and could take her
driving. Out among the sand hills she could forget the
"new room" which was the scene of wearing and fruitless
labor. Dr. Archie was away from home a good deal that
year. He had put all his money into mines above Colo-
rado Springs, and he hoped for great returns from them.
In the fall of that year, Mr. Kronborg decided that Thea
ought to show more interest in church work. H...
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