“Where is my trunk?”
“Search me! You’re a sticker all right,” the railroad man remarked and threw a bag as if he aimed at Kit.
Kit thought the next bag might hit him, and he got down. A man from the office pushed past and, refusing to stop, climbed on board the car. When the train started he gave Kit a careless glance.
“Are you wanting something?”
“I want my trunk. At Montreal your baggage clerk said I’d get it when I arrived.”
“Sure!” remarked the agent. “Those fellows do talk like that; it’s in the company’s folders. Have you got a check.”
Kit pulled out a check he got at Montreal.
“Well,” said the agent, “your trunk’s not on the train. She may come along in the morning and she may be a week. Depends on your luck.”
He went off and shut his office. Nobody came for the baggage and Kit sat down on the broken box. The cars had begun to melt into the plain and the smoke that rolled across the grass got faint. Fifty yards off a small frame hotel faced the track. The next building was a grocery, and then six or seven little shiplap houses bordered the wagon trail. There was no pavement, and the black soil was torn by wheels, but a few planks went along the front of the houses. By the hotel, two light wagons and a battered car were in the grass, and on the veranda a man smoked his pipe. Harper’s Bar was obviously a tranquil spot.
Although the settlement had not much charm, the background pleased Kit. The prairie was not the monotonous flat he had pictured. The plain rolled, and the grass was dotted by tall red flowers like lilies. Ponds shone in the hollows, poplar bluffs checkered the rises, and at one spot yellow sandhills reflected the sun. A belt of trees, marking a river, curved about a shallow valley, and in the distance the green and ocher of the grass melted into ethereal blue.