Grouped about a prostrate form in the pale blue uniformof a Filipino Captain
RAY'S DAUGHTER
A Story of Manila
By
GENERAL CHARLES KING, U.S.V.
Author of "Ray's Recruit," "Marion's Faith,""The Colonel's Daughter," etc.
Philadelphia and London
J. B. Lippincott Company
1901
Copyright, 1900
by
J. B. Lippincott Company
Electrotyped and Printed by
J. B. Lippincott Company,Philadelphia, U.S.A.
RAY'S DAUGHTER
CHAPTER I.
The long June day was drawing to its close. Hot and strong the slantingsunbeams beat upon the grimy roofs of the train and threw distortedshadows over the sand and sage-brush that stretched to the far horizon.Dense and choking, from beneath the whirring wheels the dust-clouds rosein tawny billows that enveloped the rearmost coaches and, mingling withthe black smoke of the "double-header" engines, rolled away in thedreary wake. East and west, north and south, far as the eye could reach,hemmed by low, dun-colored ridges or sharply outlined crests of remotemountain range, in lifeless desolation the landscape lay outspread tothe view. Southward, streaked with white fringe of alkali, the flatmonotone of sand and ashes blended with the flatter, flawless surfaceof a wide-spreading, ash-colored inland lake, its shores dotted atintervals with the bleaching bones of cattle and ridged with ancientwagon-tracks unwashed by not so much as a single drop from the cloudlessheavens since their first impress on the sinking soil. Here and therealong the right of way—a right no human being would care to disputewere the way ten times its width—some drowsing lizards, sprawling inthe sunshine along the ties, roused at the sound and tremor of thecoming train to squirm off into the sage-brush, but no sign of animationhad been seen since the crossing of the big divide near Promontory. Thelong, winding train, made up of mail-, express-, baggage-, emigrant-,and smoking-cars, "tourists' coaches," and huge sleepers at the rear,with a "diner" midway in the chain, was packed with gasping humanitywestward bound for the far Pacific—the long, long, tortuous climb tothe snow-capped Sierras ahead, the parched and baking valley of theGreat Salt Lake long, dreary miles behind. It was early June of the year'98, and the war with Spain was on.
There had been some delay at Ogden. The trains from the East over theUnion Pacific and the Denver and Rio Grande came in crowded, and theresources of the Southern Pacific were suddenly taxed beyond theexpectation of its officials. Troops had been whirling westwardthroughout the week, absorbing much of the rolling stock, and the emptycars were being rushed east again from Oakland pier, but the nearestwere still some hundreds of miles from this point of transfer when acarload of recruits was dumped upon the broad platform, and thesuperintendent scratched his head, and screwed up the corner of hismouth, and asked an assistant how in a hotter place than even Salt LakeValley the road could expect him to forward