“Easy,” he said. “You mean the eight: fifteen for Barstow?”
“Yes,” she said. “The eight: fifteen.” She had not meant for Barstow, but that, as the farthest eastern destination of those who usually took train from Inch, was the limit of the Inger’s imagining.
The way of descent, in the slanting light, was incredibly lovely. The time had assumed another air. With that low sun, everything was thrown sharply against the sky, like a pattern on a background. Something of the magic of the Northern days lay upon that Southern land.
Once, feeling suddenly articulate, the Inger looked over his shoulder at her, as she followed.
“It’s hell, ain’t it?” he said admiringly.
She understood this as the extreme of expression, anywhere applied.
It was not yet seven o’clock when they emerged from the last cañon, and tramped across the sage brush toward the town. There the lights were slowly shining out, and all the tawdry, squalid play of the night was beginning, as night after night it begins in the ugly settlements where men herd on the Great Desert under solemn skies. As the first sound of rattling music came to the man and the woman, she turned to him.
“Is big towns like little ones, do you know?” she asked.
He reflected, remembered San Francisco, and replied:
“Yes,” he said, “I s’pose so, mostly. But the parts where the folks try to be nice,” he added, vindictively, “are worse’n this and Inch.”
“Because,” he said, “they get too nice. They’re slush nice,” he explained it.
“I saw a lady, once,” she said. “She got off at Inch to mail a letter. Her hair was combed pretty and she had her gloves on and her shoes fit her feet—I donno. She must of come from somewheres,” she added vaguely.
“She wasn’t good-dressed like Beautiful Kate and them,” she added anxiously. “She spoke nice, too. I heard her get a stamp from Leadpipe Pete. Her words come so—easy.”
“There are them,” he said from his experience. “But not many.”
As they approached the station some stragglers were gathering to wait for the train, and the two remained near the far end of the platform. A monotonously repeated command forced itself to their attention. On a stretch of bare, hard-trodden sand, a company of the town guard was drilling in the twilight. About forty slim, loose-jointed youths were advancing and wheeling under the direction of a stocky, middle-aged man who walked like a rooster and shouted indistinguishably, in the evident belief that the tone was the thing. The Inger walked to the edge of the platform, and stared at them.