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ISBN: 0-671-56102-2

First Archway Paperback printing July, 1981

109876543
2 1

AN ARCHWAY PAPERBACK and colophon are
trademarks of Simon &
Schuster.

Printed
in the
U.S.A.
IL4 +

Ten
Mile Station

It was hot, and dusty, and bumpy—very bumpy.
The station wagon seemed to jump
from one
rut to the
next. At first the desert had been
exciting. Not now, Christie thought, it was
rather scary the farther they
drove into it. Her head ached a little as the twins kept up that
everlasting game.

"Two of those cactus things—"
Parky
yelled
almost in his sister's ear.

"Saguaro," Christie corrected. She was the
one to hold the book this time
around and look
up
all the strange things they could not name.

"Cactus things,"
Parky
repeated stubbornly.
"And a roadrunner, a cow, two cowboys, a
jeep—that's all for me!"
His head went from
side to side, though
all their
luggage and the
camping things were so stacked that it was hard
to see out. "And"—his voice became squeaky
with triumph—"a real live Indian! That ought
to count up to a hundred points for me. Nobody
else saw the Indian until I did!"

"I saw the great big rabbit," his twin, Perks,
said quickly.

"Jackrabbit," Christie corrected again.
Really, they ought to learn the
proper names
of things if they were going
to live in this coun
try—

"Fifty for the Indian."
Neal cut
Parky's
claim in half. He
marked the score in his note
book.

"It—he—was worth
more'n
fifty! That isn't
fair!"

"Children!"
Mother looked as far as she
could over her shoulder. "If
you can't play
without
quarreling, then just stop that game—
now."

The station wagon gave an extra-hard bump.
She gasped.
Parky
and Perks slid together with
a thump,
while the desert book seemed to jump
right
out of Christie's hold, thudding into
Neal's
ribs.

"What—what did we hit then?" Mother's
voice sounded queer. But the car
was running more smoothly again.

'Dip," Father answered. "They leave
depressions in the road to drain
off flash
floods—but
that one was deeper than most.
We've only
a mile more if the last direction was
right.
This is just the old back trail—the new road will be much closer."

"I certainly hope so." Mother looked around
again. "You all right,
children?"

"Sure," Neal answered for them all. Christie
straightened her glasses on her sweating nose.

At first this had been a big adventure, going
out into the desert. Now she was
not at all sure anymore. Just think of that last town—it had
been marked on Father's map as the
town of
Ocotillo
. But when they had found it, what had
been there? Just a gas station, or
rather
an
adobe building
with a gas pump
out in front,
and
inside a hamburger place and half of it a garage. It had smelled. Christie's
nose wrinkled
thinking
of the smell—grease and oil—nasty.

What
if Ten Mile Station was like that? How
could
they live in such a place? They couldn't—
that's all. She longed to ask Neal what he thought, but she would not now
with all the
rest of the family
listening.

Mother was depending on her to see that
Parky
and Perks did not get cross and
start squabbling. Maybe they had played the See It
game long enough after all—

What she was thinking was interrupted by a
loud wail from the box wedged
between her
and the
wall of the car. That was answered by
a
whine from Baron, stretched out on a blanket
roll
behind the twins.
Christie leaned over
and tried to peek inside
the cat
carrier through the netted window in
one
end. The carrier itself kept wobbling against
her. Shan wanted out. He had his harness on and maybe, if she held the
leash tight so he
could not take one of his flying leaps, she could
let him. It must be awfully hot in there. She
pushed the book onto Neal's knee.

"Can't we let Shan out? I know we've the
air conditioning, but he must be
so hot."

At Neal's nod they did so. She needed his
help—sometimes it seemed as if
Shan had
springs
inside him, he could move so fast.
Then, anchored with his leash, he sat on her
knees. But his ears were flattened
and he
showed his teeth in a warning that
he was about
ready to actively protest all
that was going on.

Thai Shan was a very special person, as he
had long ago given the
Kimballs
to understand.
Did they think he was going
to ride in a carrier for miles and miles and days and days? In spite
of Christie's coaxing words and soothing
scratching behind his ears, he continued to
complain at the top of his voice. That was not
as shrill as that of his Siamese mother, but loud
enough. He had his dark brown coat from his
Burmese father and made a very handsome ap
pearance, as he well knew.

"All right, Shan," Christie assured him.
"We'll be there soon and you
can discover
what
kind of new bugs live around here—in the
grass."

Grass—what kind of grass would grow in a
desert? When she looked out now
she saw
rocky walls
closing in about them.

"A canyon," Neal said, though she had not
asked any question.

Here
there were some growing things, plants
and
flowers! Christie was startled by cactus
plants that were wearing round crowns of color.
There were bushes too, and small trees. Father
was driving even more slowly, so they could
see a lot more. Birds flew up as the car passed
and
the twins knelt on the seat to look out more easily.

"There's water here somewhere, all right,"
Father said.

There
was something in his tone of voice that
surprised
Christie. Had Father been afraid
there
would be no
water?
For a long time few
people had come out along this bumpy old
road—that she did know.
Now there was going
to be a big new highway
coming through and
Ten Mile Station would
be close to that.

That was the reason why they were here. It
was called Ten Mile because a long
time ago
it had been
the only water in ten miles and all
the stage coaches had stopped there. Now the
Kimballs
were going to open it up
again—not
for stage
coaches, but for cars, making it a place
where people could stop and get food and gas
and perhaps stay all night. When
Father had
lost his
job because his company had been
bought
by another one, he had heard about Ten
Mile
and the chance to make it come alive
again.

The canyon widened out and there were real
trees. But the road became more
and more
bumpy. At
last Father took one hand from the
steering wheel and pointed ahead.

"There it is." The twins scrambled over
Christie and Neal to see. Shan yelled and Baron
barked loudly.

They were answered by a strange sound as
Father stopped the car before the
biggest of a
group of
buildings. There was a pole-walled
corral to one side and in that Christie caught
a glimpse of something small and
brown-gray.
That
strange sound was coming from there.
Beyond,
two burros flapped their long ears, and
there
was a horse standing watching them.

Somehow they all piled out, almost on top
of one another, to look at the
station. It was a long, low building. At the bottom it was built
of stone,
then
came thick walls of adobe, with
wooden pillars in front to support an outward stretch of
the roof like a porch. The windows
had heavy shutters of solid slabs of wood, but
those were fastened back. To
Christie it did not
look
like a house-house at all.

Beyond the corral with the burros and the
horse stood another
building,
and a man came
out of the door of that. He was small—a lot
shorter than Father—and he wore a
red shirt
with gray jeans and high-heeled boots. Perched
toward the back of his head was a wide-
brimmed hat that was as brown as the dirt of
the corral. Strangest of all, he had an apron of
leather tied around his waist, while he carried a
big hammer in one hand.

His face was tanned nearly as brown as his dusty hat.
Perhaps it looked even browner be
cause there was a bushy white mustache across
it to half hide his mouth. His
thick eyebrows
and
some pieces of hair plastered down on his
forehead were the same color.

"Howdy," he said. Then the burros brayed
together and he swung swiftly
round and
slammed the
hammer down on the top rail of
the corral so that some splinters flew into the
air. "Drat you,
Sheba
, Solomon. You keep
your dang-
blastered
opinions to yourselves
now, hear me? You folks lost?" Hardly taking a breath between words,
he was speaking to
Father
now.

"If this is Ten Mile Station and you're Lay-
ton Odell, we're not,"
Father answered. "I
guess you might
say we're the new owners. I'm
Harvey Kimball
and this is my family."

"New owners?
Glory
be
!
Th'Bright
Com
pany
gonna
start
runnin
' stages again? Now if
that
ain't
the
beatenest
news in a full month of
Sundays! I always said as how
someday they'd
find
out this country weren't made for those

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