There before them on the lonely desert, partly buried in the drifting sand, stood the remnant of a trolley-car. It was tilted rakishly to one side, its windows were yellow with dust, but on the front, faintly decipherable still, was the legend “Market Street.”
At that familiar sight, Bob Eden felt a keen pang of nostalgia. He reined in his horse and sat staring at this symbol of the desert’s triumph over the proud schemes of man. Man had thought he could conquer, he had come with his engines and his dreams, and now an old battered trolley stood alone as a warning and a threat.
“There’s your setting,” he said. “They drive out together and sit there on the steps, your lovers. What a background—a car that once trundled from Twin Peaks to the Ferry, standing lonely and forlorn amid the cactus plants.”
“Fine,” the girl answered. “I’m going to hire you to help me after this.”
They rode close to the car and dismounted. The girl unlimbered her camera and held it steady. “Don’t you want me in the picture?” Eden asked. “Just as a sample lover, you know.”
“No samples needed,” she laughed. The camera clicked. As it did so the two young people stood rooted to the desert in amazement. An old man had stepped suddenly from the interior of the car—a bent old man with a coal-black beard.
Eden’s eyes sought those of the girl. “Last Wednesday night at Madden’s?” he inquired in a low voice.
She nodded. “The old prospector,” she replied.
The black-bearded one did not speak, but stood with a startled air on the front platform of that lost trolley under the caption “Market Street.”
