Annixter marched down the line of cars, his hands encumbered with wicker telescope baskets, satchels, and valises, his tickets in his mouth, his hat on wrong side foremost, Hilma and her parents hurrying on behind him, trying to keep up. Annixter was in a turmoil of nerves lest something should go wrong; catching a train was always for him a little crisis. He rushed ahead so furiously that when he had found his Pullman he had lost his party. He set down his valises to mark the place and charged back along the platform, waving his arms.
“Come on,” he cried, when, at length, he espied the others. “We’ve no more time.”
He shouldered and urged them forward to where he had set his valises, only to find one of them gone. Instantly he raised an outcry. Aha, a fine way to treat passengers! There was P. and S.W. management for you. He would, by the Lord, he would—but the porter appeared in the vestibule of the car to placate him. He had already taken his valises inside.
Annixter would not permit Hilma’s parents to board the car, declaring that the train might pull out any moment. So he and his wife, following the porter down the narrow passage by the stateroom, took their places and, raising the window, leaned out to say goodbye to Mr. and Mrs. Tree. These latter would not return to Quien Sabe. Old man Tree had found a business chance awaiting him in the matter of supplying his relative’s hotel with dairy products. But Bonneville was not too far from San Francisco; the separation was by no means final.
The porters began taking up the steps that stood by the vestibule of each sleeping-car.
“Well, have a good time, daughter,” observed her father; “and come up to see us whenever you can.”
From beyond the enclosure of the depot’s reverberating roof came the measured clang of a bell.
“I guess we’re off,” cried Annixter. “Goodbye, Mrs. Tree.”
“Remember your promise, Hilma,” her mother hastened to exclaim, “to write every Sunday afternoon.”
There came a prolonged creaking and groan of straining wood and iron work, all along the length of the train. They all began to cry their goodbyes at once. The train stirred, moved forward, and gathering slow headway, rolled slowly out into the sunlight. Hilma leaned out of the window and as long as she could keep her mother in sight waved her handkerchief. Then at length she sat back in her seat and looked at her husband.
“Well,” she said.
“Well,” echoed Annixter, “happy?” for the tears rose in her eyes.
She nodded energetically, smiling at him bravely.
“You look a little pale,” he declared, frowning uneasily; “feel well?”
“Pretty well.”
Promptly he was seized with uneasiness. “But not all well, hey? Is that it?”
It was true that Hilma had felt a faint tremour of seasickness on the ferryboat coming from the city to the Oakland mole. No doubt a little nausea yet remained with her. But Annixter refused to accept this explanation. He was distressed beyond expression.
“Now you’re going to be sick,” he cried anxiously.
“No, no,” she protested, “not a bit.”
“But you said you didn’t feel very well. Where is it you feel sick?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sick. Oh, dear me, why will you bother?”
“Headache?”
“Not the least.”
“You feel tired, then. That’s it. No wonder, the way rushed you ’round today.”
“Dear, I’m not tired, and I’m not sick, and I’m all right.”
“No, no; I can tell. I think we’d best have the berth made up and you lie down.”
“That would be perfectly ridiculous.”
“Well, where is it you feel sick? Show me; put your hand on the place. Want to eat something?”
With elaborate minuteness, he cross-questioned her, refusing to let the subject drop, protesting that she had dark circles under her eyes; that she had grown thinner.
“Wonder if there’s a doctor on board,” he murmured, looking uncertainly about the car. “Let me see your tongue. I know—a little whiskey is what you want, that and some pru—”
“No, no, no,” she exclaimed. “I’m as well as I ever was in all my life. Look at me. Now, tell me, do I look like a sick lady?”
He scrutinised her face distressfully.
“Now, don’t I look the picture of health?” she challenged.
“In a way you do,” he began, “and then again—”
Hilma beat a tattoo with her heels upon the floor, shutting her fists, the thumbs tucked inside. She closed her eyes, shaking her head energetically.
“I won’t listen, I won’t listen, I won’t listen,” she cried.
“But, just the same—”
“Gibble—gibble—gibble,” she mocked. “I won’t listen, I won’t listen.” She put a hand over his mouth. “Look, here’s the dining-car waiter, and the first call for supper, and your wife is hungry.”
They went forward and had supper in the diner, while the long train, now out upon the main line, settled itself to its pace, the prolonged, even gallop that it would hold for the better part of the week, spinning out the miles as a cotton spinner spins thread.
It was already dark when Antioch was left behind. Abruptly the sunset appeared to wheel in the sky and readjusted itself to the right of the track behind Mount Diablo, here visible almost to its base. The train had turned southward. Neroly was passed, then Brentwood, then Byron. In the gathering dusk, mountains began to build themselves up on either hand, far off, blocking the horizon. The train shot forward, roaring. Between the mountains the land lay level, cut up into farms, ranches. These continually grew larger; growing wheat began to appear, billowing in the wind of the train’s passage. The mountains
