"Where's Charley?" asked Felicia suddenly.
The station door opened and the baggage man, in blue overalls and jumper, appeared. He was frankly interested in the new arrivals and answered Ernest's question promptly.
"Preble? Sure! Dick Preble was here the first of the week. Told me he'd be in next week to meet the little girl. How'd you come a week early, sissy?"
Felicia's lip was quivering. "I don't know! Aunt Mary put me on the train and said Charley would meet me."
"Can we telephone them?" asked Ernest.
The baggage man grinned. "Telephone? Boys, come here a minute."
He led them to the other side of the concrete station where the view was unobstructed by the train shed, and pointed northeast.
"Take a look," he suggested.
The station platform ended in yellow sand. Across an open space were some one-story buildings; beyond these an indefinite level of sand that melted, at what distance one could not say, into a line of mountains that were black and crimson and at last snow-capped against the translucent blue of the morning sky.
"This road," said the baggage man, "goes along pretty good for eight or ten miles north, then it's nothing but a wagon track trail. If you follow it for twenty-five miles you reach Preble's mine. He says he's trying dry farming this spring. There ain't a living human being, except a few Injuns, between there and here. Sabez? And they ain't a brute thing but coyotes, and lizards and maybe wild burros, and so they ain't no call for a telephone."