“Come on, Frances,” urged her father, as eager as a boy. He ran across the tracks and Frances dutifully followed him. Pratt remained on the platform and looked rather wistfully after her. Their conversation had been broken off abruptly. He had not had an opportunity to say all that he wanted to say and he was to go back to Amarillo the next day.
He saw the Captain and his daughter climb the steps, helped by the negro porter. They disappeared within the lighted car. Pratt still lingered. His pony was hitched up the street a block or so. There really was nothing further for him to wait for.
Suddenly shadows appeared on a curtain of one section of the car. The shade flew up and the window was raised.
The young man from Amarillo stood right where the lamplight fell upon his features. He found himself staring into the face of a grey-visaged, sharp-eyed old man, who had a great shock of grey hair on the top of his head like a cockatoo’s tuft.
The stranger stared at Pratt earnestly, and then beckoned him with both hands, shouting:
“Hey, you boy! You there, with the plaid cap. Come here!”
Rather startled, and not a little amused, Pratt started slowly in the direction of the car.
“Hey! Lift your feet there,” called out the old man. “You act like you had the hookworm. Git a move on!”
“What do you want?” demanded Pratt, coming under the window. He could see into the lighted car now, and he observed Frances and her father standing back of the stranger, the Captain broadly agrin.
The man reached down suddenly and grabbed Pratt by the lobe of his right ear–pinching it between thumb and finger.