Page:Maud Howe - A Newport Aquarelle.djvu/189

 familiarly with gentlemen whose clothes might have been forwarded them to this remote spot by Poole. A Mexican ranchero with a wide sombrero and high boots paced up and down the narrow plank platform, talking earnestly with a smart-looking man of the Teutonic race.

From the scraps of their conversation, Farwell gathered that the Mexican was consulting the German professionally, on the subject of his wife's health. Farwell learned from a loquacious Jew, a commercial traveller who entered into conversation with him, that the Mexican lived fifty miles distant, and had ridden over to procure medicine for his ailing wife from the medical practitioner of Cheyenne. The same obliging personage gave Farwell brief sketches of the most prominent of the individuals who stood about the platform, leaning against the station or sitting on the steps.

"That little fellow there with the red beard is an Englishman; calls himself at home Lord