Extract: CHAPTER I OAKLEY was alone in the bare general offices of the Huckleberry line-as the Buckhom and Antioch Railroad was commonly called by the public, which it betrayed in the matter of meals and connections. He was lolling lazily over his desk with a copy of the local paper before him, and the stem of a disreputable cob pipe between his teeth. The business of the day was done, and the noise and hurry attending its doing had given way to a sudden hush. Other sounds than those that had filled the ear since morning grew out of the stillness. Big drops of rain driven by the wind splashed softly against the unpainted pine door which led into the yards, or fell with a gay patter on the corrugated tin roof overhead. No. 7, due at 5.40, had just pulled out with twenty minutes to make up between Antioch and Harrison, the western terminus of the line. The six-o'clock whistle had blown, and the men from the car shops, a dingy, one-story building that joined the general offices on the east, were straggling off home. Across the tracks at the ugly little depot the ticket-agent and telegraph-operator had locked up and hurried away under one umbrella the moment No. 7 was clear of the platform. From the yards every one was gone but Milton McClintock, the master mechanic, and Dutch Pete, the yard buss. Protected by dripping yellow oil-skins, they were busy repairing a wheezy switch engine that had been incontinently backed into a siding and the caboose of a freight. Oakley was waiting the return of Clarence, the office-boy, whom he had sent up-town to the post-office. Having read the two columns of local and personal gossip arranged under the heading "People You Know," he swept his newspaper into the wastebasket and pushed back his chair. The window nearest his desk overlooked the yards and a long line of shabby day coaches and battered freight cars on one of the sidings. They were there to be rebuilt or repaired. This meant a new lease of life to the shops, which had never proved profitable.
About the Author: Vaughan or Vaughn Kester (September 12, 1869 - July 4, 1911) was an American novelist and journalist. He was the elder brother of dramatist and author Paul Kester (1870-1933). His style and topics were influenced by his travels through western and southern U.S., and by his mother's cousin William Dean Howells. His novel The Manager of the B & A, was made into a film in 1916 directed by J.P. McGowan, with Leo Maloney and Helen Holmes, reissued in 1921 as The Man from Medicine Hat. He married Jessie B. Jennings from Mount Vernon, Ohio on August 31, 1898. They had no children. In 1902, with his brother, he purchased and renovated Woodlawn Plantation. From 1907, he lived at Gunston Hall, where he wrote The Prodigal Judge, and where he died. A memorial in his honor was placed by his mother in Pohick Church, which had at one time been the parish church of Gunston Hall.