e week's washing. Mrs. Hooven
was a faded, colourless woman, middle-aged and commonplace, and offering
not the least characteristic that would distinguish her from a thousand
other women of her class and kind. She nodded to Presley, watching
him with a stolid gaze from under her arm, which she held across her
forehead to shade her eyes.

But now Presley exerted himself in good earnest. His bicycle flew.
He resolved that after all he would go to Guadalajara. He crossed the
bridge over the irrigating ditch with a brusque spurt of hollow sound,
and shot forward down the last stretch of the Lower Road that yet
intervened between Hooven's and the town. He was on the fourth division
of the ranch now, the only one whereon the wheat had been successful, no
doubt because of the Little Mission Creek that ran through it. But he no
longer occupied himself with the landscape. His only concern was to get
on as fast as possible. He had looked forward to spending nearly the
whole day on the crest of the wooded hills in the northern corner of the
Quien Sabe ranch, reading, idling, smoking his pipe. But now he would
do well if he arrived there by the middle of the afternoon. In a few
moments he had reached the line fence that marked the limits of the
ranch. Here were the railroad tracks, and just beyond--a huddled mass of
roofs, with here and there an adobe house on its outskirts--the little
town of Guadalajara. Nearer at hand, and directly in front of Presley,
were the freight and passenger depots of the P. and S. W., painted in
the grey and white, which seemed to be the official colours of all the
buildings owned by the corporation. The station was deserted. No trains
passed at this hour. From the direction of the ticket window, Presley
heard the unsteady chittering of the telegraph key. In the shadow of
one of the baggage trucks upon the platform, the great yellow cat that
belonged to the agent dozed complacently, her paws tucked under her
body. Three flat cars, loaded with bright-painted farming machines,
were on the siding above the station, while, on the switch below, a huge
freight engine that lacked its cow-catcher sat back upon its monstrous
driving-wheels, motionless, solid, drawing long breaths that were
punctuated by the subdued sound of its steam-pump clicking at exact
intervals.

But evidently it had been decreed that Presley should be stopped at
every point of his ride that day, for, as he was pushing his bicycle
across