"There she comes," exclaimed a boy, one of a crowd awaiting the evening train in the hot little box of a depot at Silver City, New Mexico. A speck of yellow had suddenly appeared far down the light, worn rails to the east. Fifty loungers moved forward. The evening train was coming at last. "If mother don't look out," added the speaker, who was a tall, slender young chap with strikingly black hair and eyes, "she'll miss the train an' the folks that are coming. Mother seems to like to be late-always." "Don't get excited, Jerry," broke in a second boy, this one with big shoulders, a square determined face with a winning smile, and, his chief characteristic, a big mop of yellow hair. "I think Ike and your mother are coming right now." While the headlight was yet only a growing star on the far-away plain, a military hack, drawn by two nervous horses in charge of a colored soldier in uniform, dashed up to the now lively depot in a cloud of dust.