"Hesitation Kane," explained Rhoda, hurrying ahead. "Come on,
folks! Oh, I am glad to get home!"
Bess, who was last, save Walter, to reach the station platform,
gave one comprehensive glance around the barren place.
"Well!" she said. "If this is home--"
"'Home was never like this,'" chuckled Walter.
A few board shacks, the station itself unpainted, sagebrush and
patches of alkali here and there, and an endless trail leading out
across a vista of flat land that seemed horizonless. The train
steamed away, having halted but a moment. To all but Rhoda the
scene was like something unreal. "My goodness!" murmured Grace,
"even the moving pictures didn't show anything like this."
"They say the desert scenes made by some of the movie companies are
photographed at Coney Island. And I guess it's true," said Walter.
Rhoda had run across the tracks toward where a two-seated
buckboard, drawn by a pair of eager ponies, was standing. Beside it
stood two saddle horses, their heads drooping and their reins
trailing before them in the dust. The man who drove the ponies wore
a huge straw sombrero of Mexican manufacture. When he turned to
look at his employer's daughter the others saw a very solemn and
sunburned visage.
"Oh, Hess!" cried Rhoda. "How are you? Is mother all right?"
The man stared unblinkingly at her and his facial muscles never
moved. He was thin-lipped, and his hawk nose made a high barrier
between his eyes.
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