The Cattle-Baron's Daughter by Harold Bindloss

It was almost unpleasantly hot in the little iron-roofed room at the railroad depot, and the agent, who flung the door open, stood still a minute or two blinking into the darkness. A big lamp that flickered in the wind cast an uncertain gleam upon the slushy whiteness under foot, and the blurred outline of a towering water-tank showed dimly through the sliding snow. He could also just discern the great locomotive waiting on the side-track, and the sibilant hiss of steam that mingled with the moaning of the wind whirling a white haze out of the obscurity. Beyond the track, and showing only now and then, the lights of the wooden town blinked fitfully; on the other hand and behind the depot was an empty waste of snow-sheeted prairie. The temperature had gone up suddenly, but the agent shivered as he felt the raw dampness strike through him, and, closing the door, took off and shook his jacket and sat down by the stove again.

He wore a white shirt of unusually choice linen, with other garments of fashionable city cut, for a station agent is a person of importance in the West, and this one was at least as consequential as most of the rest. He had finished his six o'clock supper at the wooden hotel a little earlier; and as the next train going west would not arrive for two or three hours, he took out a rank cigar, and, placing his feet upon a chair, prepared to doze the time away, though he laid a bundle of accounts upon his knee, in case anyone should come in unexpectedly. This, however, was distinctly improbable on such a night.