ets of water into the blazing cavities, changing malodorous smoke to
dense clouds of equally unsavory steam, and the recruits in the
afflicted car found consolation in "joshing" the hard-sweating,
hard-swearing workers, the young officer who had boarded the second
sleeper at Ogden, together with half a dozen bipeds in dusters or
frazzled shirt-sleeves, had become involved in a complication on the
shadier side of the train.

Somewhere into the sage-brush a jack-rabbit had darted and was now in
hiding. With a dozen eager heads poked from the northward windows and
stretching arms and index fingers guiding them in their inglorious hunt,
the lieutenant and his few associates were stalking the first
four-footed object sighted from the train since the crossing of the bald
divide.

Within the heated cars, with flushed faces and plying palm-leaf fans, a
few of the women passengers were languidly gazing from the windows. At
the centre window of the second sleeper, without a palm-leaf and looking
serene and unperturbed, sat the young girl whose lovely face had so
excited Mr. Stuyvesant's deep admiration. Thrice since leaving Ogden, on
one pretext or other, had he passed her section and stolen such a look
as could be given without obvious staring. Immediately in rear of the
seat she occupied was an austere maiden of middle age, one of the
passengers who had come on by the Union Pacific from Omaha. Directly
opposite sat two men whom Stuyvesant had held in but scant esteem up to
the time they left the valley of Salt Lake. Now, because their sections
stood over against hers, his manner relaxed with his mood. Circumstances
had brought the elderly maid and himself to the same table on two
occasions in the dining-car, but he had hitherto felt no desire to press
the acquaintance.

This afternoon he minded him of a new book he had in his bag, for
literature, he judged, might be her hobby, and had engaged her in
conversation, of which his share was meant to impress the tiny,
translucent ear that nestled in the dark-brown coils and waves of the
pretty head in front of him.

When, however, it became patent that his companion desired to form her
own impressions of the pages uninfluenced by his well-delivered
comments, Mr. Stuyvesant had bethought him of the semi-somnolent
occupants of the opposite section, and some cabalistic signs he ventured
with a little silver cup summoned them in pleased surprise to the
water-cooler at the rear end,