“Oh, yes. She told the world about it. Manzanita’s funny that way. She was born at Squawtooth—in a saddle, she says—and she don’t like any other place on earth. She don’t like railroads ner autos ner flyin’ machines, ner any o’ the modern tricks. And she don’t like neighbors, either. Just wants to ride and ride forever over the desert, and the furder she c’n look without seein’ anything but what the Almighty put there the better she likes it. And as for your railroad runnin’ right through Squawtooth—say, she was wild as a loco Indian. But she’s calmed down now. She took a likin’ to ye, Mr. Mangan, and I guess that’s what made her change her mind.”
“I’m certainly glad to hear you say that last, Mr. Canby.” Hunt Mangan’s face was a little red. “I—I formed a high opinion of your daughter during the few days in which you folks at Squawtooth showed us such royal hospitality. I hated to have her so sore at me for being a party to the desecration of her adored solitudes. I consider her a remarkable young woman.”
“She’s worse than that!” Squawtooth replied, with a slight frown of abstraction.
Outside, across the street, a freight train stopped before the depot. Cautiously the door of a box car slid open, and two hobos looked out, and up and down the track, then dropped to the ground and hurried away.
Squawtooth Canby, who had observed through the fly-specked hotel window, chuckled.
“See them tramps get outa that box car?” he asked Mangan. “Purty slick, some o’ them fellas.”
“Stay here a day and you’ll see hundreds of them,” laughingly replied Hunt Mangan. “They’re drifting in by dozens and twenties. The train crews are not hard on them, for they know they’re beating it in here to work. Tramps—stiffs, as we call ’em—form the backbone of railroad construction, you know.”
“I didn’t know tramps worked at all,” said Canby.
“You’ll know more about them before the steel is laid across Squawtooth,” observed Mangan. “There are tramps and tramps.”
“Here comes them two into the hotel,” remarked the cowman.