Isn’t it a good thing for women that they can’t take peeps into what is going to happen to them next? Men could digest their disclosed futures complacently, but on account of pure excitement, women never in the world could even sufficiently masticate theirs to swallow them.
“Is it far from Crow Point to Pigeon Creek?” I asked the conductor, by way of amusing myself.
“About one horse-pull,” he answered lucidly, as he went to help a woman and eleven children off at Hitch It.
I’m glad now he was no more explicit.
Crow Point was just a little farther along the road than Hitch It, and we got there before I had time to ask him any more questions. Purple dusk was just hovering over the mountain-top, as if uncertain about settling down upon it for the night, when the train stopped. He called Crow Point, and I jumped off—the universe.
I stood for a few minutes, with my mind tottering.
“Looking for anybody, little gal?” came a drawl from out the twilight just in time to keep me from running after the train to try and tell them that I didn’t want to be left alone in the mountains at dark. A man sat all hunched up on the tree-trunk that supported one end of the huge log which represented the station platform of Crow Point, whittling a small stick.
“Is this Crow Point?” I gasped from the depths of both consternation and amazement as I looked from him to the three trunks stacked on the ground by the rustic platform.
“Sure am,” was the answer, as the small red slivers of wood flew.
“Is this—this all of it?” I asked, this time less from consternation than astonishment.