At the Time Appointed
By Anna Maynard Barbour
Patches of sage-brush and bunch grass, burned sere and brown, alternated with barren stretches of sand from which piles of rubble rose here and there, telling of worked-out and abandoned mines. Occasionally a current of air stole noiselessly down from the canyon above, but its breath scorched the withered vegetation like the blast from a furnace. Not a sound broke the stillness; life itself seemed temporarily suspended, while the very air pulsated and vibrated with the heat, rising in thin, quivering columns.
Suddenly the silence was broken by the rapid approach of the stage from a distant mining camp, rattling noisily down the street, followed by a slight stir within the deserted station. Whirling at breakneck pace around a sharp turn, it stopped precipitately, amid a blinding cloud of dust, to deposit its passengers at the depot.
One of these, a young man of about five-and-twenty, arose with some difficulty from the cramped position which for seven weary hours he had been forced to maintain, and, with sundry stretchings and shakings of his superb form, seemed at last to pull himself together. Having secured his belongings from the pile of miscellaneous luggage thrown from the stage upon the platform, he advanced towards the slouching figure of a man just emerging from the baggage room, his hands thrust deep in his trousers pockets, his mouth stretched in a prodigious yawn, the arrival of the stage having awakened him from his siesta.
“How’s the west-bound—on time?” queried the young man rather shortly, but despite the curtness of his accents, there was a musical quality in the ringing tones.
Before the cavernous jaws could close sufficiently for reply, two distant whistles sounded almost simultaneously.
“That’s her,” drawled the man, with a backward jerk of his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the sound; “she’s at Blind Man’s Pass; be here in about fifteen minutes.”
The young man turned and sauntered to the rear end of the platform, where he paused for a few moments; then, unconscious of the scrutiny of his fellow passengers, he began silently pacing up and down, being in no mood for conversation with anyone.
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Anna Maynard Barbour
Anna Maynard Barbour (died May 10, 1941) was an American author of best-selling fiction. A 1903 article in The Atlantic Monthly stated that “A. Maynard Barbour has been generally hailed as the most successful of American writers of mystery.”
Biography
Anna Barbour was born in Mansfield, New York, in the 19th century to Fayette Barbour and Jane E. Cutler. Her parents died when she was young. During the late 19th century, she lived in Helena, Montana, where she worked for the U. S. Government. She married an English gentleman in 1893, and her husband reportedly encouraged her writing career. In 1907 she became an Episcopal deaconess at the House of Mercy in Boston and subsequently worked in Boston and Tennessee.
Works
- The Award of Justice; Or, Told in the Rockies: A Pen Picture of the West (1897)
- That Mainwaring Affair (1900)
- The award of justice (1901)
- At the Time Appointed (1903)
- Breakers Ahead (1906)
Anna Maynard Barbour
