Page:The Tattooed Countess (1924).pdf/88

 gies, their horses strapped to iron rings in stone hitching-posts, stood by the kerbs; occasionally a shop-keeper scanned the vacant street anxiously from his doorway.

A curious fact about Iowa towns of this period was that they had no suburbs; nor did the business district straggle. It was built compactly, and one left it almost directly to come upon the factories of the industries which, added to the corn-belt in which Maple Valley centred, made the place an important provincial metropolis. Lennie and Gareth marched between the great grain elevators, towering to the sky, between the factories, where a little later, furnaces would flare, machines throb, great wheels turn, and leather belts, like fantastic giant ribbons, would exploit this energy. Now all was still. Behind these they passed through the railroad-yards, with switchman's tower, repair-shops, round-house, the home of otiose locomotives, and huge turn-table, by means of which an engine might be made to go or come. Directly beyond, they entered upon the river road, just by the corner of an old mill, whose wheel, fed by the expanse of water created by a dam, incessantly revolved, causing the corn-flour to be ground out. Below the dam, the intense heat had almost dried up the river. A fairly broad stream—of deep water ran down one side of the naked bed, near the bank, and streamlets trickled here and there, but most of the bed lay dry and baking under