p over the door. Only a broad band
of golden-yellow flowers crossing the tracks not far from the shanty and
disappearing in the distance in both directions showed where heavy
cart-wheels and horses' hoofs had torn up the ground.

By following this curious yellow track, which testified to the existence
of human intercourse even in the great lonely prairie, in a southerly
direction, one could notice about a mile from the station a slight
rising of the ground covered with low shrubs and a tangled mass of
thistles and creepers: This was Swallowtown No. 1, the spot where once
upon a time a dozen people or more, thrown together by chance, had
founded a homestead, but whose traces had been utterly obliterated
since. The little waves of the great national migration to this virgin
soil had after a few years washed everything away and had carried the
inhabitants of the huts with them on their backs several miles farther
south, where by another mere chance they had located on the banks of the
river. The only permanent sign of this ebb and flow was the tin-roofed
shanty near the tracks of the Oregon Railway, and the proud name of
Swallowtown, fast disappearing under the ravages of storm and rain, on
the box-lid over Tom Gardner's door.

Tom Gardner regarded his morning's work complacently. With the aid of
his ax he had transformed the tree-stump that had lain behind the
station for years into a hitching-post, which he was going to set up for
the farmers, so that they could tie their horses to it when they came to
the station. Tom had had enough of fastening the iron ring into the
outer wall of his shanty, for it had been torn out four times by the
shying of the wild horses harnessed to the vehicles sent from
Swallowtown to meet passengers. And the day before yesterday Bob
Cratchit's horses had added insult to injury by running off with a board
out of the back wall. Tom was sick and tired of it; the day before he
had temporarily stopped up the hole with a tin advertisement, which
notified the inhabitants of Swallowtown who wanted to take the train
that Millner's pills were the best remedy for indigestion. Tom decided
to set up his post at midday.

He stopped work for the present in order to be ready for station-duty
when the express from Pendleton passed through in half an hour. From
force of habit and half unconsciously, he glanced along the yellow road
running south, wondering whether in spite of its being Sunday there
might no