By an accident it was just before sunset when they reached a small wayside station known as Sunset Pass, because the Sunset trail led away from it. The party expected to spend the night at a big ranch house some miles away and, if possible, make camp the next morning.
But, as they left the train, suddenly the day had changed from heat to coldness. The girls and Mrs. Burton, as well, felt an uncomfortable sense of chill at their surroundings.
The little western station looked so bare and dreary. There were scarcely a dozen frame houses in view and these were all built alike and had no flowers or shrubbery to relieve their dullness.
Near the station was an extraordinary structure, which covered more than a half acre of ground. It was built of wooden planks so crossed and recrossed as to form small rooms or pens. It might have been an enormous open-air prison and was in fact. Weird and lonely noises issued from it—the bleating of hundreds of sheep waiting for a cattle train to ship them to the eastern market.
Had she been alone, Mrs. Burton felt she would have given way to homesickness. However, as Camp Fire guardian and the oldest member of what was after all her own expedition, she must appear cheerful.
Then Marie unexpectedly relieved the situation.
Descending from the train to the wooden platform, Marie gave a long look at the surroundings and burst into tears. And her tears were not of the silent variety.
Sally Ashton and Peggy giggled irresistibly, but everybody smiled.
Marie looked so incongruous. Her costume was the perfectly correct one she wore when following her famous mistress through a sometimes curious crowd at the Grand Central Station in New York City, or through another almost equally large.
But it was Gerry Williams, after all, who went to Marie and patted her sympathetically on the shoulder. Mrs. Burton was pleased. And it was true that, in spite of other weaknesses, Gerry did things like this naturally, although she may not have been entirely unconscious, even at this moment, of their Camp Fire guardian’s presence.