Page:Cy Warman--The express messenger and other tales of the rail.djvu/95

 WAKALONA

HE old engineer and I had dragged our chairs round to the south side of the hospital and were enjoying, as well as the weak and wounded could be expected to enjoy, the mountain air and the morning. June was in the mountains, but the snow was still heavy on the high peaks. The yellow river, soiled by the Leadville smelters, and still freighted with floating mush-ice, splashed by on its way to Pueblo and the Tierra Caliente. The little gray, glad-faced surgeon came along presently and told Frank that he might go home on Saturday, and that made the old engineer, usually a little mite cranky and irritable, as happy as a boy about to be loosed from school.

"Say, Frank," I began, "did you ever catch up with an Indian girl who could, by