The hitch rails were empty, and there was not a cowboy in sight. Before
the post-office a terribly grimy touring car stood with its
running-boards loaded with canvas-covered suitcases. Three goggled,
sunburned women in ugly khaki suits were disconsolately drinking soda
water from bottles without straws, and a goggled, red-faced,
angry-looking man was jerking impatiently at the hood of the machine.
Lorraine and her suitcase apparently excited no interest whatever in
Echo, Idaho.
The station agent was carrying two boxes of oranges and a crate of
California cabbages in out of the sun, and a limp individual in blue
gingham shirt and dirty overalls had shouldered the mail sack and was
making his way across the dusty, rut-scored street to the post-office.
Two questions and two brief answers convinced her that the station agent
did not know Britton Hunter,--which was strange, unless this happened to
be a very new agent. Lorraine left him to his cabbages and followed the
man with the mail sack.
At the post-office the anemic clerk came forward, eyeing her with
admiring curiosity. Lorraine had seen anemic young men all her life, and
the last three years had made her perfectly familiar with that look in a
young man's eyes.
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