The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ray's Daughter, by Charles King

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Title: Ray's Daughter
A Story of Manila

Author: Charles King

Release Date: October 6, 2006 [EBook #19480]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration: Grouped about a prostrate form in the pale blue uniform
of 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 slanting
sunbeams beat upon the grimy roofs of the train and threw distorted
shadows over the sand and sage-brush that stretched to the far horizon.
Dense and choking, from beneath the whirring wheels the dust-clouds rose
in tawny billows that enveloped the rearmost coaches and, mingling with
the black smoke of the "double-header" engines, rolled away in the
dreary wake. East and west, north and south, far as the eye could reach,
hemmed by low, dun-colored ridges or sharply outlined crests of remote
mountain range, in lifeless desolation the landscape lay outspread to
the view. Southward, streaked with white fringe of alkali, the flat
monotone of sand and ashes blended with the flatter, flawless surface
of a wide-spreading, ash-colored inland lake, its shores dotted at
intervals with the bleaching bones of cattle and ridged with ancient
wagon-tracks unwashed by not so much as a single drop from the cloudless
heavens since their first impress on the sinking soil. Here and there
along the right of way--a right no human being would care to dispute
were the way ten times its width--some drowsing lizards, sprawling in
the sunshine along the