Alicia was bored to distraction. This was not her idea of a good time. She had been communing with nature too long for one of her disposition. She wanted some one to make eyes at, except a perspiring brakeman, who swore openly at everything connected with the railroad business.
And with everybody in this pleasant mood, the train jerked to a stop at the station of San Rego. The train drew up far enough for the observation platform of the Lake Louise to stop midway of the station platform. Alicia lolled in an easy chair, mumbled at some sodden chocolates and wished she was far away from San Rego.
Suddenly she sat up.
But that is getting along too far in the story. “Slim” Simpson weighed exactly two hundred and twenty pounds. He was twenty-two years of age—and in love. He had been a perfectly good cowpuncher until the love-bug inoculated his emaciated form; but now he was worthless for anything—except love.
Sadie Thompson was the maid of his choice. Sadie’s pa was proprietor, or rather station-agent at San Rego. He owned a little home on the outskirts of San Rego, with honeysuckle, or something like that, around the door.
Sadie was of a jealous and suspicious nature, and she had a sneaking idea that Slim had danced too many times with the school teacher the night before. Anyway, she told Slim that she wouldn’t divide him up with any woman, even if there was enough of him to divide.
Poor Slim had poked his nose to the sky and wailingly assured her that he was “her’n, and only her’n.” But Sadie parted the honeysuckles, or whatever grew about the porch, and sent Slim uptown, pawing his way through a haze of indigo blue.
Slim didn’t want a drink; he wanted solitude. And where may a man find more assorted kinds of solitude than on the heat scourged planks of a desert depot. He made up his mind to be a martyr—and melt.
But at the depot he ran into Jim Hilton and Barney McGonigle from the Lazy B ranch. They were trying to dig up enough money to pay for an express package, which had come C. O. D. They greeted him warmly and borrowed a dollar and eighty cents.