“I wish there wasn't,” sighed Andy. “Florence Grace is kinda getting on my nerves. If I done what I feel like doing, I'd crawl under the platform and size up the layout through a crack. Honest to gracious, Boys, I hate to meet that lady.”
They grinned at him heartlessly and stared at the black smudge that was rolling toward them. “She's sure hittin' her up,” Pink vouchsafed with a certain tenseness of tone. That train was not as ordinary trains; dimly they felt that it was relentlessly bringing them trouble, perhaps; certainly a problem—unless the homeseekers hovered only so long as it took them to see that wisdom lay in looking elsewhere for a home. Still—
“If this was August instead of May, I wouldn't worry none about them pilgrims staying long,” Jack Bates voiced the thought that was uppermost in their minds.
“There comes two livery rigs to haul 'em to the hotel,” Pink pointed out as he glanced toward town. “And there's another one. Johnny told me every room they've got is spoke for, and two in every bed.”
“That wouldn't take no crowd,” Happy Jack grumbled, remembering the limitations of Dry Lake's hotel. “Here come Chip and the missus. Wonder what they want?”
The Little Doctor left Chip to get their tickets and walked quickly toward them.
“Hello, boys! Waiting for someone, or just going somewhere?”
“Waiting. Same to you, Mrs. Chip,” Weary replied.
“To me? Well, we're going up to make our filings. Claude won't take a homestead, because we'll have to stay on at the Flying U, of course, and we couldn't hold one. But we'll both file desert claims. J. G. hasn't been a bit well, and I didn't dare leave him before—and of course Claude wouldn't go till I did. That the passenger coming, or a freight?”
“It's the train—with the dry-farmers,” Andy informed her with a glance at the nearing smoke-smudge.