"Why! it looks like a foreign country already," Janice sighed.
But Marty was only eager. His eyes fairly snapped and he almost forgot to eat the very nice breakfast that Janice had ordered, he was so deeply interested in all that was outside the car windows.
Yet the outlook for the most part was rather dreary between stations, while the stations themselves were "as ugly as a mud fence" to quote Marty.
"But everything is new," said the boy. "I ain't missin' anything."
The conductor viséd their tickets for a stop-over at Fort Hancock and agreed to "pull her down" for that station although it was not a stopping point for through trains.
"You'll have to go on up to El Paso on a local," he drawled; "and you'll have to mix up with greasers an' such."
"How do you know we shall want to go on to El Paso at all?" asked Janice, smiling.
"Why, ma'am, nobody ever stays in these river towns any longer'n they kin he'p. And outside of the soldiers stationed hereabout there's only seventy-five folks or so, in the place--only two of _them_ white."
"Ol José Pez keeps the store and hotel. He's not such a robber as _some_; he's too lazy--and too proud, I reckon. You got folks at the post?"
"We expect to meet Lieutenant Cowan," Janice said.
The cousins were the only passengers to leave the train, and they were quite unexpected. The natives, who _en masse_ always met the trains scheduled to stop at the station, refused to believe that the "limited" had stopped. They preferred to believe that the appearance of the two young strangers was an hallucination; better such a mystery in their placid lives than the unexpected reality.
Several little children came to stare at Janice and Marty standing on the platform before the corrugated iron station, in which there was not even an agent. _One_ of these infants was dressed. He wore a torn hat evidently having belonged originally to someone with a much larger head than he possessed. He had to lift up its brim with both hands to peer at the strangers.
"Gee!" sighed Marty, his freckled face brightening. "Ain't it immense?"
His cousin stared at him in an amazement that gradually changed to something like admiration. She suddenly realized that, if she could have chosen her escort, nobody would have so well suited as Marty Day under these distressing circumstances. He might not be very wise, but he was immensely enthusiastic.