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
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