Fascinated, the cow-men watched them approach.

“My Gawd!” Old Heck hoarsely whispered, “that’s them!”

“Let’s go!” Skinny exclaimed, sweat starting in unheeded beads on his forehead.  “Good lord, let’s get in the car and go while we got a chance!”

Old Heck made a move as if to comply, then stopped.  “Can’t now,” he said gloomily, “it’s too late!”

As Old Heck turned the woman shrieked in a rasping voice: 

“Hey—­hey you!  Wait a minute!”

The cow-men looked around and stared dumbly, dazedly, at her.

“Can I get you to take me an’ my daughter out to that construction camp where they’re buildin’ a ditch or something?” she asked; “that policeman said maybe we could get you to—­” she continued.  “I got a job cookin’ out there an’ Lize here is goin’ to wait on table.”

Old Heck, still looking up in her eyes, with horror written on every line of his face, his lips twitching till he could scarcely speak, finally managed to say: 

“Ain’t—­ain’t you Ophelia?”

“Ophelia?  Ophelia who?” she asked, then before he could speak she answered his question:  “Ophelia—­huh!  No, I ain’t Ophelia!  I’m Missus Jasamine Swope an’ a married woman an’ you’d better not try to get fresh or—­”

Simultaneous with Old Heck’s question, Skinny, his eyes riveted on the dowdy girl, asked in a voice barely audible: 

“Are you—­are you Carolyn June?”

“No, I ain’t Carolyn June,” she snorted.  “Come on, ma; let’s go!  Them two’s crazy or white slavers or somethin’!”

Expressing their scorn and disdain by the angry flirt of their skirts, the woman and girl whirled and walked briskly away toward the garage at the end of the street.

“Praise th’ heavens,” Old Heck breathed fervently as he gazed spell-bound after the retreating pair, “it wasn’t them!”

“Carolyn June and the widow probably went back after all,” Skinny said without, looking around and with the barest trace of disappointment, now that the danger seemed past, in his voice.  “Maybe they got to thinking about that telegram and decided not to come at last.”

“More than likely that was it,” Old Heck answered.

Steps sounded behind them.  Skinny and Old Heck turned and again they almost fainted at what they saw.  The marshal, a leather traveling bag in each hand, accompanied by two smartly dressed women, approached.

“These ladies are huntin’ for you,” he said to Old Heck, dropping the bags and mopping his face with the sleeve of his shirt.  “Guess they’re some kind of kin folks,” he added.

Concealed by the freight sheds Carolyn June Dixon and Ophelia Cobb had stepped from the Pullman at the rear of the train, unseen by Old Heck and Skinny.  Nor had either noticed, being engrossed with the couple that had left than a moment before, the trio coming across from the station.

As the cook and her daughter by their very homeliness had appalled and overwhelmed them, these two, Ophelia and Carolyn June, by their exactly opposite appearance stunned Old Heck and Skinny and rendered them speechless with embarrassment.  Both were silently thankful they had shaved that morning and Skinny wondered if his face, like Old Heck’s, was streaked with sweat and dust.