The trip from San Francisco to Lobo Wells had seemed interminably long to Nan Whitlock, but her nerve almost failed her when she heard the brakeman calling: “Lo-o-o-bo Wells, next station! Lo-o-o-bo Wells!”
Nan had rather shocked the landlady by paying the rent the morning after Madge Allan had been killed, and rather mystified the authorities, who were looking for more information about Madge Allan, only to find that Nan had faded out of the picture. Mrs. Emmett had offered to turn Madge’s trunk over to her, but Nan refused it. It had been a simple matter to cash the hundred-dollar cheque.
But now she was facing the test, as the train ground to a stop at the weather-beaten depot, and she came down timidly, carrying a large valise. She had not replied to the lawyer’s letter, so there was no one at the station to meet her.
Except for a cowboy who leaned negligently against a corner of the depot, watching the depot agent and a brakeman unloading some stuff from the express car, the platform was empty. After a few moments the train went on and the cowboy went into the station with the agent.
With the train out of the way, Nan was able to get her first look at the town of Lobo Wells. And her first impression was not a flattering one. The station and tracks seemed to be a barrier across one end of the main street, which was narrow, dusty, with crooked wooden sidewalks and false-fronted wooden buildings, many of them out of line.
Saddle horses nodded at the hitchracks in the noonday sun, and a bunch of loose horses milled around a corral behind a livery-stable, throwing clouds of dust.
It was very hot there on the old platform. Pitch oozed from the pine planks, and Nan could feel the heat through the thin soles of her shoes. The cowboy came from the station, stopped on the edge of the platform and looked at her.
It was Len Ayres, but a different Len Ayres than had come back to Lobo Wells three days before. Whispering had loaned him enough money for a new outfit of clothes, and Len had always been slightly inclined to the gaudy, in raiment. His shirt was a robin’s-egg blue, with scarlet muffler and a tan sombrero. His chaps were a second-hand pair, but nearly new, with fancy rosettes, cut in the extreme of bat-wing type. His belt and gun were the same he had worn before his arrest, having been kept at the Box S by Harmony Singer.
“Beg your pardon, ma’am,” he said slowly. “Were you lookin’ for somebody especial?”
“Well,—I suppose not,” replied Nan helplessly. “Foolish of me to expect any one, because no one knew when I was coming. But I wish you could direct me to the office of an attorney by the name of Baggs.”