So saying, Farley went about his business, which, at that hour, had something to do with getting his battered old car hitched to the end of a passenger train and whisked away on some pressing matter farther west.
Across from Dr, Hall's freight-car office, the main line, a sidetrack for the work-train and a cinder-covered space of trodden ground lying between, a long string of boarding-cars stood on a siding. There were a dozen or more of these cars, with ladder steps leading up to their broad side-doors, glimpses of bunks to be seen in some of them, cooking activities going forward in one.
Dr. Hall stood on the cinder bank at his own door after Farley's departure, looking across at the boarding train. It was then about four o'clock in the afternoon, and quiet as if the last man had gone away from Damascus and given up the struggle of making a town where there seemed to be so little need of one. The wind was moving in the tender leaves of the cottonwood trees along the river, their newly unfolded gloss glittering like bits of enamell as they fluttered and turned toward the sun, with the soothing whisper of gently falling rain.
Smoke was rising in vigorous column from a stocky stovepipe through the top of the car which Hall took to be the kitchen. This car was the last but one in the string, the other being a tank car with the train's water supply, and almost directly opposite the doctor's own. There was a flitting of skirts across the open door as those who labored within hurried like building birds about their duties. Now and then a face was turned, an eye flashed in his direction, as the white-aproned figures dashed back and forth across the open door, which had a close-fitting wire screen, Hall crossed the track, thinking that, as
