CHAPTER XXII.
AT ROSARIO STATION.
The dull gray of the dawn was illuminating the east, and the breath of the morning astir in the tree-tops, when Bill Whiting, station agent at Rosario, began to bestir himself. The station agent was not about so early on account of passengers that might be expected by an early train—for the excellent reason that there was no morning train. Since fighting had begun in Chihuahua, schedules had, to quote Bill, "gone to pot." On a sidetrack lay a locomotive, smokeless and inert, just as her crew had abandoned her. Some loaded freight cars, their contents untouched, likewise stood on the spur. That Bill Whiting, however, meant to guard the railroad's property, was evidenced by the fact that strapped to his waist was a portly revolver, while a rifle lay handy in the ticket office, in which, since the outbreak of trouble, he had watched and slept and cooked.
Bill's first task, after tumbling out of his blankets and washing his face in a tin basin standing in one corner of the office, was to tap the telegraph key. The instrument gave out a lifeless "tick-tick."
"No juice—blazes!" grunted Bill, and, being a philosophical young man, he bothered himself no more about the matter, and went about getting his breakfast.
In the midst of his preparations, however, he suddenly straightened up and listened intently. To hear better, he even shoved aside the sizzling frying-pan from its position over one burner of his kerosene stove. What had attracted his attention was a distant sound—faint at first, but momentarily growing nearer.
"Blazes!" muttered Bill, scratching his head, and making for a rear window, which commanded a view of the long, white road. "What's that, I wonder? Sounds like a sick cow."
He gazed out of the window earnestly, and then suddenly recoiled with a startled exclamation.
"Blazes! It ain't no cow. It's an automobubble. Yes, sir, as sure as you live, it's a bubble. Whose can it be? Maybe it's old man Stetson's himself."