Page:J Allan Dunn--The Girl of Ghost Mountain.djvu/40

22 the railroad spur came out through Pioche Pass, it had to ignore the demands of citizens to come right into town by reason of quicksands. One train a day ran up from Pioche, rested a while and trailed back again. This was due at five o'clock and to it, on the return trip, would be attached the cars into which Sheridan and his men loaded the sweating, lowing, bewildered cattle.

It was done at last and Jackson went off to Metzal with another cowboy to make some purchases. Sheridan thought it likely that they would bring back "something on the hip" besides their guns but he was not worried about their getting drunk. Jackson, the Texan, was the type who, to use his own phrase, "worked like hell between paydays and raised hell while the check lasted." Neither of them, he was sure, had more than a dollar or two with them, and they had not drawn any.

He rode as far as the depot with them to see the agent about his waybills, bringing his mare alongside the platform, as high on the side of the street as it was by the track, reached at either end by a ramp. The agent roused himself at his call from an intermittent siesta and they transacted their business by the time a whistle sounded and the train from Pioche came shuffling in.

One passenger alighted and Sheridan stared at him curiously. The man was in dark blue serge and he wore a black broadbrim, of the type affected in the West by Pinkerton detectives and Chinamen. This was a Chinaman but he was different from any Chinese Sheridan had ever seen, far from the Mott