The shadows fell. Over the Chiricahuas flared the evening star. The plain, self-luminous with the weird lucence of the arid lands, showed ghostly. Jed Parker, coming out from the lamp-lit adobe, leaned his elbows on the rail in silent company with his chief. He, too, looked abroad. His mind's eye saw what his body's eye had always told him were the insistent notes—the alkali, the cactus, the sage, the mesquite, the lava, the choking dust, the blinding beat, the burning thirst. He sighed in the dim half recollection of past days.
"I wonder if she'll like the country?" he hazarded.
But Senor Johnson turned on him his steady eyes, filled with the great glory of the desert.
"Like the country!" he marvelled slowly. "Of course! Why shouldn't she?"
CHAPTER FIVE
THE ARRIVAL
The Overland drew into Willets, coated from engine to observation with white dust. A porter, in strange contrast of neatness, flung open the vestibule, dropped his little carpeted step, and turned to assist someone. A few idle passengers gazed out on the uninteresting, flat frontier town.
Senor Johnson caught his breath in amazement. "God! Ain't she just like her picture!" he exclaimed. He seemed to find this astonishing.
For a moment he did not step forward to claim her, so she stood looking about her uncertainly, her leather suit-case at her feet.