Neither had spoken; the buck did not move from his position,
and fully five minutes afterward, when the slow-moving freight was miles
away, the dentist looked back and saw him still standing motionless
between the rails, a forlorn and solitary point of red, lost in the
immensity of the surrounding white blur of the desert.
At length the mountains began again, rising up on either side of the
track; vast, naked hills of white sand and red rock, spotted with
blue shadows. Here and there a patch of green was spread like a gay
table-cloth over the sand. All at once Mount Whitney leaped over the
horizon. Independence was reached and passed; the freight, nearly
emptied by now, and much shortened, rolled along the shores of Owen
Lake. At a place called Keeler it stopped definitely. It was the
terminus of the road.
The town of Keeler was a one-street town, not unlike Iowa Hill--the
post-office, the bar and hotel, the Odd Fellows' Hall, and the livery
stable being the principal buildings.
"Where to now?" muttered McTeague to himself as he sat on the edge of
the bed in his room in the hotel. He hung the canary in the window,
filled its little bathtub, and watched it take its bath with enormous
satisfaction.
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