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Long before she reached Manti she saw the train from Dry Bottom, due at Manti at six o'clock, gliding over the plains toward the town, and when she arrived at the station its passengers had been swallowed by Manti's buildings and the station agent and an assistant were dragging and bumping trunks and boxes over the station platform.
Trevison had meditated, not without a certain wry humor, upon the strength and the protracted potency of Manti's whiskey, for not once during his home-coming had Levins shown the slightest sign of returning consciousness. He was as slack as a meal sack now, as Trevison lifted him from the pony's back and let him slip gently to the ground at his feet.
Manti dominated the landscape, not because it was big and imposing, but because it was new. Manti's buildings were scattered there had been no need for crowding; but from a distance from Trevison's distance, for instance, which was a matter of three miles or so Manti looked insignificant, toy-like, in comparison with the vast world on whose bosom it sat. Manti seemed futile, ridiculous.
Compared to the substantial buildings of the East, Manti's structures were hovels. Here was the primitive town in the first flush of its creation. Miss Benham did not laugh, for a mental picture rose before her a bit of wild New England coast, a lowering sky, a group of Old-world pilgrims shivering around a blazing fire in the open, a ship in the offing.
He had achieved a double result by his deed, for besides destroying the property and making it impossible for Corrigan to resume work for a considerable time, he had caused Manti's interest to center upon him sharply, having shocked into the town's consciousness a conception of the desperate battle that was being waged at its doors.
Directed at the town it relieved the pressure of their resentment over Trevison's habit of depending upon himself. For, secretly, both were interested admirers of Manti's growing importance. Time was measured by their desires. Sometime before midnight Barkwell got up, yawned and stretched. "Sleep suits me. If 'Firebrand' ain't reckonin' on a guardian, I ain't surprisin' him none.
Leading the way he took them through Manti's back door across a railroad spur to a shanty beside the track which the engineer in charge of the dam occasionally occupied when his duty compelled him to check up arriving material and supplies.
Here and there a light burned in a dwelling or store, or shone through the wall of a tent-house. But Manti's one street was deserted the only peace that Manti ever knew, had descended.
"Well," she said, looking at the black horse; "I intend to observe Manti's citizens more closely before attempting to express an opinion." Half an hour later, in response to Corrigan's invitation, Rosalind was walking down Manti's one street, Corrigan beside her. Corrigan had donned khaki clothing, a broad, felt hat, boots, neckerchief.
"They're afraid to take a chance," he said, meaning Manti's citizens. "Don't blame them. I've spread the stuff around as you told me. That's all they've heard. They're here on a forlorn hope.
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