"A kindly-faced old lady looked at me over her spectacles, and I asked:
"'Does Mrs. Julia Bradshaw live here?'
"'Yes, sir; that's me.'
"'Have you a young lady here named Rachel R--'
"The old lady didn't wait for me to finish the name, she just turned her
head fifteen degrees, put her open hand up beside her mouth, and shouted
upstairs:
"'Rachel! Rachel! Come down here, quick! Here's your young man from
America!'"
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S TRIP
It is all of twenty years now since the little incident happened that I
am going to tell you about. After the strike of '77, I went into exile
in the wild and woolly West, mostly in "bleeding Kansas," but often in
Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona--the Santa Fe goes almost everywhere
in the Southwest.
One night in August I was dropping an old Baldwin consolidator down a
long Mexican grade, after having helped a stock train over the division
by double-heading. It was close and hot on this sage-brush waste,
something not unusual at night in high altitudes, and the heat and sheet
lightning around the horizon warned me that there was to be one of those
short, fierce storms that come but once or twice a year in these
latitudes, and which are known as cloudbursts.
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