He returned with them to the caboose in which they had come down, and when he got back to the work the big camp kettles were already slung along the bench, and the engine bringing the car of black powder was steaming slowing into the upper canyon. On a flat bowlder back of the cooks, Morris Blood, Ed Smith, and the roadmasters were sitting down to coffee and sandwiches, and Glover joined them. Men in relays were eating at the camp and dynamiters were picking their way across the face of the Cat's Paw with the giant powder. The engineers were still at their coffee-fire when the scream of a locomotive whistle came through the canyon from below. Blood looked up. "There's one of the fast mail engines, probably the 1026. Who in the world has brought her up?"

"More than likely," suggested Glover, finishing his coffee, "it's Bucks."



CHAPTER VIII

SPLITTING THE PAW

Preceded by a track boss along the ledges where the blasting crew was already putting down the dynamite, a man almost as large as Glover and rigged in a storm cap and ulster made his way toward the camp headquarters. The mountain men sprang to their feet with a greeting for the general manager—it was Bucks.

He took Blood's welcome with a laugh, nodded to the roadmasters, and pulling his cap from his head, turned to grasp Glover's hand.

"I hear you're going to spoil some of our scenery, Ab. I thought I'd run up and see how much government land you were going to move without a permit. Glad you got down so promptly. Callahan had nervous prostration for a while last night. I told him you'd have some sort of a trick in your bag, but I didn't suppose you would spring the side of a mountain on us. Am I to have any coffee or not? What are you eating, dynamite? Why, there's Ed Smith—what are you hanging back in the dark for, Ed? Come out here and show yourself. It was like you to lend us your men. If the boys forget it, I sha'n't."

"I'd rather see you than a hundred men," declared Glover.

"Then give me something to eat," suggested Bucks.

As he spoke the snappy, sharp reports of exploding dynamite could be heard; they were springing the drill holes. Bucks sitting down on the bowlder, wrapping the tails of his coat between his legs and taking coffee from Young drank while the men talked. From the box car below, Ed Smith's men were packing the black powder up the trail to the Paw. When it began going into the holes, Glover went to the ledge to oversee the charging.

In the Pittsburg train, at Sleepy Cat, an early dinner was being served to the canyon party. They had come back enthusiastic. The scenery was declared superb, and the uncertainty of the situation most satisfying. The riot of the mountain stream, which plunging now unbridled from wall to wall had scoured the deep gorge for hundreds of feet, was a moving spectacle. The activity of the swarming laborers, preparing their one tremendous answer to the insolence of the river, had behind it the excitement of a game of chance. The stake, indeed, was eight solid trains of perishable freight, and the gambler that had staked their value and his reputation on one throw of the dice was their own easy-mannered guide.

They discussed his chances with the indifference of spectators. Doctor Lanning, the only one of the young people that had ever done anything himself, was inclined to think Glover might win out. Allen Harrison was willing to wager that trains couldn't be got across a hole like that for another twenty-four hours.

Mrs. Whitney wondered why, if Mr. Glover were really a competent man, he could not have held his position as chief engineer of the system, but Doctor Lanning explained that frequently Western men of real talent were wholly lacking in ambition and preferred a free-and-easy life to one of constant responsibility; others, again, drank—and this suggestion opened a discussion as to whether Western men could possibly do more drinking than Eastern men, and transact business at all.

While the discussion proceeded there came a telegram from Glover telling Doctor Lanning that the blast would be made about seven o'clock. Preparations to start were completed as the company rose from the table, and Gertrude Brock and Marie were urged to join the party. Marie consented, but Gertrude had a new book and would not leave it, and when the others started she joined her father and Judge Saltzer, her father's counsellor, now with them, who were dining more leisurely at their own table.

Bucks met the doctor and his party at the head of the canyon and took them to the high ledge across the river, where they had been brought by Glover in the morning. In the canyon it was already dark. Men were eating around campfires, and in the narrow strip of eastern sky between the walls the moon was rising. Work-trains with signal lanterns were moving above and below the break, dumping ballast behind the track layers. At a safe distance from the coming blast a dozen headlights from the roundhouse were being prepared, and the car-tinks from Sleepy Cat were rigging torches for the night.

The blasting powder in twenty-pound cans was being passed from hand to hand to the chargers. Score after score of the compact cans of high explosive had been packed into the scattered holes, and as if alive to what was coming the chill air of the canyon took on the uneasiness of an atmosphere laden with electricity. Men of the operating department paced the bench impatiently, and trackmen working below in the flare of scattered torches looked up oftener from their shovels to where a chain of active figures moved on the face of the cliff. Word passed again and again that the charging was done, but the orders came steadily from the gloom on the ledge for more powder until the last pound the engineer called for had been buried beneath his feet in the sleeping rock.

After a long delay a red light swung slowly to and fro on the ledge. From the extreme end of the canyon below the Cat's Paw came the crash of a track-torpedo, answered almost instantly by a second, above the break. It was the warning signal to get into the clear. There was a buzz of rapid movement among the laborers. In twos and threes and dozens, a ragged procession of lanterns and torches, they retreated, foremen urging the laggards, until only a single man at each end of the broken track kept within sight of the tiny red lantern on the ledge. Again it swung in a circle and again the torpedoes replied, this time all clear. The hush of a hundred voices, the silence of the bars and shovels and picks gave back to the chill canyon its loneliness, and the roar of the river rose undisturbed to the brooding night.

On the ledge Glover was alone. The final detail he was taking into his own hands. The few that could still command the point saw the red light moving, and beside it a figure vaguely outlined making its way. When the red light paused, a spark could be seen, a sputtering blaze would run slowly from it, hesitate, flare and die. Another and another of the fuses were touched and passed. With quickening steps tier after tier was covered, until those looking saw the red light flung at last into the air. It circled high between the canyon walls in its flight and dropped like a rocket into the Rat. A muffled report from the lower tier was followed by a heavier and still a heavier one above. A creeping pang shot the heart of the granite, a dreadful awakening was upon it.

From the tier of the upmost holes came at length the terrific burst of the heavy mines. The travail of an awful instant followed, the face of the spur parted from its side, toppled an instant in the confusion of its rending and with an appalling crash fell upon the river below.

With the fragments still tumbling, the nearest men started with a cheer from their concealment. Smoke rolling white and sullen upward obscured the moon, and the canyon air, salt and sick with gases, poured over the high point on which the Pittsburgers stood. Below, torches were shooting like fireflies out of the rock. From every vantage point headlights flashed one after another unhooded on the scene, and the song of the river mingled again with the calling of the foremen.

"That ends the fireworks," remarked Bucks to those about him. "Let us watch a moment for Mr. Glover's signal to me. As soon as he inspects he is to show signals on the Cat's Paw, and if it is a success we will return at once to Sleepy Cat."

"And by the way, Mr. Bucks, I shall expect you and Mr. Glover up to the car for my game supper. Have you arranged for him to come?"

"I have, Mrs. Whitney, thank you."

"Oh, see those pretty red lights over there now. What are they?" asked Louise, who stood with Allen Harrison.

"The signals," exclaimed Bucks. "Three fusees. Good for Glover; that means success. Shall we go?"

When the sightseers made their way out of the canyon material trains working from both ends of the break were shoving their loaded flats noisily up to the ballasting crews and the water was echoing the clang of the spike mauls, the thud of tamping-irons, the clash of picks, the splash of tumbling stone, and the ceaseless roll of shovels.

Foot by foot, length by length, the gap was shortened. Bribed by extra pay, driven by the bosses, and stimulated by the emergency, the work of the graders became an effort close to fury. Watches were already consulted and wagers were being laid between rival foremen on the moment a train should pass the point. Above the peaks the stars glittered, and high in the sky the moon shot a path of clear light down the river itself. The camp kettles steamed constantly, and coffee strong enough to ballast eggs and primed with unusual cordials was passed every hour among the hundreds along the track.

In the lower yard at Sleepy Cat the pilot train was being made ready and the clatter of switching came into the canyon. From still further came the barking exhaust of the first-train engine waiting for orders for the canyon run.

Glover pacing the narrow bench below the camp returned again to the operator's table, and in the light of the lantern wrote a message to Medicine Bend. When it had been sent he upended an empty spike keg, and sitting down before the fire, got his back against a rock and gave himself to his thoughts. Men straggled back and forth, but none disturbed him. Some, in turn, fed the fire, some rolled themselves in their blankets and lay down to sleep, but his eyes were lost all the while in the leaping blaze.

A volleying signal of the locomotive whistles roused him. He looked at his watch and stepped to the verge of the ledge. Toward Sleepy Cat a headlight was slowly rounding the first curve. The pilot train was coming and below where he stood he could see green lights swinging. The locomotive of the work-train was at the hind end and the roadmasters standing on the first flat car were signalling. Mauls were ringing at the last spikes when the head flat car moved cautiously out on the new track. Car after car approached, every second one bearing a flagman re-signalling to the cab as the train took the short curves of the canyon and entering the gorge rolled slowly beneath the Cat's Paw over the prostrate granite.

The trackmen parted only long enough to give way to the advancing cars. The locomotive steamed gingerly along. In the gangway stood a small, broad-hatted man, Morris Blood. He waved his lantern at Glover, and Glover caught up a hand-torch to swing an answering greeting.

Down the uncertain track could be seen at reassuring intervals the slow, green lights of the track foremen swinging all's well. The deepening drum of the steaming engine as it entered the gorge walls, the straining of the injectors, and the frequent hissing check of the air as the powerful machine restrained its moving load, was music to the tired listener above. Then, looming darkly behind the tender, surprising the onlookers, even Glover himself, came the real train. Not till the roadbuilders heard the heavy drop of the big cars on the new rail joints did they realize that the first train of fruit was already crossing the break.

Ten minutes afterward Bucks, who was with Mr. Brock in the directors' car, had the news in a message. The manager had agreed to have Glover present for the supper which was now waiting, and for some time messengers and telegrams passed from the Brock Special to the canyon. It was not until twelve o'clock that they learned definitely through word from Morris Blood that Glover had torn his hand slightly in handling powder and had gone to Medicine Bend to have it dressed.



CHAPTER IX

A TRUCE

If Glover's aim in disappearing had been to escape the embarrassment of Mrs. Whitney's attentions the effort was successful only in part.

Lanning and Harrison left in the morning in charge of Bill Dancing to join the hunting party in the Park, and Mr. Brock finding himself within a few hours' ride of Medicine Bend decided to run down. Late in the afternoon the Pittsburg train drew up at the Wickiup.

Gertrude and her sister left their car together to walk in the sunshine that flooded the platform, for the sun was still a little above the mountains. In front of the eating-house a fawn-colored collie racing across the lawn attracted Gertrude, and with her sister she started up the walk to make friends with him. In one of his rushes he darted up the eating-house steps and ran around to the west porch, the two young ladies leisurely following. As they turned the corner they saw their runaway crouching before a man who, with one foot on the low railing, stood leaning against a pillar. The collie was waiting for a lump of sugar, and his master had just taken one from the pocket of his sack coat when the young ladies recognized him.

"Really, Mr. Glover, your tastes are domestic," declared Marie; "you make excellent taffy—now I find you feeding a collie." She pointed to the lump of sugar. "And how is your hand?"

"I can't get over seeing you here," said Glover, collecting himself by degrees. "When did you come? Take these chairs, won't you?"

"You, I believe, are responsible for the early resumption of traffic through the canyon," answered Marie. "Besides, nothing in our wanderings need ever cause surprise. Anyone unfortunate enough to be attached to a directors' party will end in a feeble-minded institution."

Gertrude was talking to the collie. "Isn't he beautiful, Marie?" she exclaimed. "Come here, you dear fellow. I fell in love with him the minute I saw him—to whom does he belong, Mr. Glover? Come here."

"How is your hand?" asked Marie.

"Do give Mr. Glover a chance," interposed Gertrude. "Tell me about this dog, Mr. Glover."

"He is the best dog in the world, Miss Brock. Mr. Bucks gave him to me when I first came to the mountains—we were puppies together——"

"And how about your hand?" smiled Marie.

"What is his name?" asked Gertrude.

"It wasn't a hand, it was a wrist, and it is much better, thank you—his name is Stumah."

"Stumah? How odd. Come here, Stumah. Does he mind?"

"He doesn't mind me, but no one minds me, so I forgive him that."

"Aunt Jane doesn't think you mind very well," said Marie. "Clem had a steak twice as large as usual prepared for the supper you ran away from."

"It is always my misfortune to miss good things."

Talking, Glover and Marie followed Gertrude and Stumah out on the grass and across to the big platform where an overland train had pulled in from the west. They watched the changing of the engines and the crews, and the promenade of the travellers from the Pullmans.

While Gertrude amused herself with the dog, and Marie asked questions about the locomotive, Mrs. Whitney and Louise spied them and walked over. Glover, to make his peace, was compelled to take dinner with the party in their car. The atmosphere of the special train had never seemed so attractive as on that night. To cordiality was added deference. The effect of his success in the canyon—only striking rather than remarkable—was noticeable on Mr. Brock. At dinner, which was served at one table in the dining-car, Glover was brought by the Pittsburg magnate to sit at his own right hand, Bucks being opposite. No one may ever say that the value of resource in emergency is lost on the dynamic Mr. Brock. But having placed his guest in the seat of honor he paid no further attention to him unless his running fire of big secrets, discussed before the engineer unreservedly with Bucks, might be taken as implying that he looked on the constructionist of the Mountain Division as one of his inner official family.

Glover understood the abstraction of big men, and this forgetfulness was no discouragement. There was an abstraction on his left where Gertrude sat that was less comfortable.

At no moment during the time he had spent with the company had he been able to penetrate her reserve enough to make more than an attempt at an apology for his appalling blunder in the office. With the others he never found himself at a loss for a word or an opportunity; with Gertrude he was apparently helpless.

The talk at the lower end of the table ran for a while to comment on the washout, to Glover's wrist, and during lulls Mrs. Whitney across the table asked questions calculated to draw a family history from her uneasy guest. Even Glover's waiter gave him so much attention that he got little to eat, but the engineer concealed no effort to see that Gertrude Brock was served and to break down by unobtrusive courtesies her determined restraint.

When the evening was over he found himself at the pass to which every evening in her company brought him—the unpleasant consciousness of a failure of his endeavors and a return of the rage he felt at himself for having blundered into her bad graces. Her father wanted him to return with them in the morning to Sleepy Cat to go over the tunnel plans again. That done, Glover resolved at all costs to escape from the punishment which every moment near her brought.

When they started for Sleepy Cat, the afternoon sun was bright, and much of the time was spent on the pretty observation platform of the Brock car. During the shifting of the groups Mr. Brock stepped forward into the directors' car for some papers, and Gertrude found herself alone for a moment on the platform with Glover. She was watching the track. He was studying a blueprint, and this time he made no effort to break the silence. Determined that the interval should not become a conscious one she spoke. "Papa seems unwilling to give you much rest to-day."

"I think I am learning more from him, though, than he is learning from me," returned Glover, without looking up. "He is a man of big ideas; I should be glad of a chance to know him."

"You are likely to have that during the next two weeks."

"I fear not."

"Did you not understand that Judge Saltzer and he are both to be with our party now?"

"But I am to leave it to-night."

She made no comment. "You do not understand why I joined it," he continued, "after my——"

"I understand, at least, how distasteful the association must have been."

He had looked up, and without flinching, he took the blow into his slow, heavy eyes, but in a manner as mild as Glover's, defiance could hardly be said to have place at any time.

"I have given you too good ground to visit your impatience on me," he said, "and I confess I've stood the ordeal badly. Your contempt has cut me to the quick. But don't, I beg, add to my humiliation by such a reproach. I'm blundering, but not wholly reprobate."

Her father appeared at the door. Glover's eyes were fastened on the blueprint.

Gertrude let her magazine lie in her lap. She could not at all understand the plans the two men were discussing, but her father spoke so confidently about taking up Glover's suggestions in detail during the two weeks that they should have together, and Glover said so little, that she intervened presently with a little remark. "Papa; are you not forgetting that Mr. Glover says he cannot be with us on the Park trip."

"I am not forgetting it because Mr. Glover hasn't said so."

"I so understood Mr. Glover."

"Certainly not," objected Mr. Brock, looking at his companion.

"It is a disappointment to me," said Glover, "that I can't be with you."

"Why, Mr. Bucks and I have arranged it, to-day. There are no other duties," observed Mr. Brock, tersely.

"True, but the fact is I am not well."

"Nonsense; tired out, that's all. We will rest you up; the trip will refresh you. I want you with me very particularly, Mr. Glover."

"Which makes me the sorrier I cannot be."

"Here, Mr. Bucks," called Mr. Brock, abruptly, through the open door. "What's the matter with your arrangements? Mr. Glover says he can't go through the Park."

The patient manager left Judge Saltzer, with whom he was talking, and came out on the platform. Gertrude went into the car. When the train reached Sleepy Cat, at dusk, she was sitting alone in her favorite corner near the rear door. The train stopped at a junction semaphore and she heard Bucks' voice on the observation platform.

"I hate to see a man ruin his own chances in this way, that's all," he was saying. "I've set the pins for you to take the rebuilding of the whole main line, but you succeed admirably in undoing my plans. By declining this opportunity you relegate yourself to obscurity just as you've made a hit in the canyon that is a fortune in itself."

"Whatever the effect," she heard someone reply with an effort at lightness, "deal gently with me, old man. The trouble is of my own making. I seem unable to face the results."

The train started and the voices were lost. Bucks stepped into the car and, without seeing Gertrude in the shadow, walked forward. She felt that Glover was alone on the platform and sat for several moments irresolute. After a while she rose, crossed to the table and fingered the roses in the jar. She saw him sitting alone in the dusk and stepped to the door; the train had slowed for the yard. "Mr. Glover?—do not get up—may I be frank for a moment? I fear I am causing unnecessary complications—" Glover had risen.

"You, Miss Brock?"

"Did you really mean what you said to me this afternoon?"

"Very sincerely."

"Then I may say with equal sincerity that I should feel sorry to spoil papa's plans and Mr. Bucks' and your own."

"It is not you, at all, but I who have——"

"I was going to suggest that something in the nature of a compromise might be managed——"

"I have lost confidence in my ability to manage anything, but if you would manage I should be very——"

"It might be for two weeks—" She was half laughing at her own suggestion and at his seriousness.

"I should try to deserve an extension."

"—To begin to-morrow morning——"

"Gladly, for that would last longer than if it began to-night. Indeed, Miss Brock, I——"

"But—please—I do not undertake to receive explanations." He could only bow. "The status," she continued, gravely, "should remain, I think, the same."



CHAPTER X

AND A SHOCK

The directors' party had been inspecting the Camp Pilot mines. The train was riding the crest of the pass when the sun set, and in the east long stretches of snow-sheds were vanishing In the shadows of the valley.

Glover, engaged with Mr. Brock, Judge Saltzer, and Bucks, had been forward all day, among the directors. The compartments of the Brock car were closed when he walked back through the train and the rear platform was deserted. He seated himself in his favorite corner of the umbrella porch, where he could cross his legs, lean far back, and with an engineer's eye study the swiftly receding grace of the curves and elevations of the track. They were covering a stretch of his own construction, a pet, built when he still felt young; when he had come from the East fiery with the spirit of twenty-five.

But since then he had seen seven years of blizzards, blockades, and washouts; of hard work, hardships, and disappointments. This maiden track that they were speeding over he was not ashamed of; the work was good engineering yet. But now with new and great responsibilities on his horizon, possibilities that once would have fired his imagination, he felt that seven years in and out of the mountains had left him battle-scarred and moody.

"My sister was saying last night as she saw you sitting where you are now—that we should always associate this corner with you. Don't get up." Gertrude Brock, dressed for dinner, stood in the doorway. "You never tire of watching the track," she said, sinking into the chair he offered as he rose. Her frank manner was unlooked for, but he knew they were soon to part and felt that something of that was behind her concession. He answered in his mood.

"The track, the mountains," he replied; "I have little else."

"Would not many consider the mountains enough?"

"No doubt."

"I should think them a continual inspiration."

"So they are; though sometimes they inspire too much."

"It is so still and beautiful through here." She leaned back in her chair, supported her elbows on its arms and clasped her hands; the stealing charm of her cordiality had already roused him.

"This bit of track we are covering," said he after a pause, "is the first I built on this division; and just now I have been recalling my very first sight of the mountains." She leaned slightly forward, and again he was coaxed on. "Every tradition of my childhood was associated with this country—the plains and rivers and mountains. It wasn't alone the reading—though I read without end—but the stories of the old French traders I used to hear in the shops, and sometimes of trappers I used to find along the river front of the old town; I fed on their yarns. And it was always the wild horse and the buffalo and the Sioux and the mountains—I dreamed of nothing else. Now, so many times, I meet strangers that come into the mountains—foreigners often—and I can never listen to their rhapsodies, or even read their books about the Rockies, without a jealousy that they are talking without leave of something that's mine. What can the Rockies mean to them? Surely, if an American boy has a heritage it is the Rockies. What can they feel of what I felt the first time I stood at sunset on the plains and my very dreams loomed into the western sky? I toppled on my pins just at seeing them."

She laughed softly. "You are fond of the mountains."

"I have little else," he repeated.

"Then they ought to be loyal to you. But the first impression—it hardly remains, I suppose?"

"I am not sure. They don't grow any smaller; sometimes I think they grow bigger."

"Then you are fond of them. That's constancy, and constancy is a capital test of a charm."

"But I'm never sure whether they are, as you say, loyal to me. We had once on this division a remarkable man named Hailey—a bridge engineer, and a very great one. He and I stood one night on a caisson at the Spider Water—the first caisson he put into the river—do you remember that big river you crossed on the plains——"

"Indeed! I am not likely to forget a night I spent at the Spider Water; continue."

"Hailey put in the bridge there. 'This old stream ought to be thankful to you, Hailey, for a piece of work like this,' I said to him. 'No,' he answered, quite in earnest; 'the Spider doesn't like me. It will get me some time.' So I think about these mountains. I like them, and I don't like them. Sometimes I think as Hailey thought of the Spider—and the Spider did get him."

"How serious you grow!" she exclaimed, lightly.

"The truce ends to-morrow."

"And the journey ends," she remarked, encouragingly.

"What, please, does that line mean that I see so often, 'Journeys end in lovers meeting?'"

"I haven't an idea. But, oh, these mountains!" she exclaimed, stepping in caution to the guard-rail. "Could anything be more awful than this?" They were crawling antlike up a mountain spur that rose dizzily on their right; on the left they overhung a bottomless pit. Their engines churned, panted, and struggled up the curve, and as they talked the dense smoke from the stacks sucked far down into the gap they were skirting.

"The roadbed is chiselled out of the granite all along here. This is the famed Mount Pilot on the left, and this the worst spot on the division for snow. You wouldn't think of extending our truce?"

"To-morrow we leave for the coast."

"But you could leave the truce; and I want it ever so much."

She laughed. "Why should one want a truce after the occasion for it has passed?"

"Sometimes out here in the desert we get away from water. You don't know, of course, what it is to want water? I lost a trail once in the Spanish Sinks and for two days I wanted water."

"Dreadful. I have heard of such things. How did you ever find your way again?"

He hesitated. "Sometimes instinct serves after reason fails. It wasn't very good water when I reached it, but I did not know about that for two weeks. It is a curious thing, too—physiologists, I am told, have some name for the mental condition—but a man that has suffered once for water will at times suffer intensely for it again, even though you saturate him with water, drown him in it."

"How very strange; almost incredible, is it not? Have you ever experienced such a sensation?"

"I have felt it, but never acutely until to-day; that is why I want to get the truce extended. I dread the next two days."

She looked puzzled. "Mr. Glover, if you have jestingly beguiled me into real sympathy I shall be angry in earnest."

"You are going to-morrow. How could I jest about it? When you go I face the desert again. You have come like water into my life—are you going out of it forever to-morrow? May I never hope to see you again—or hear from you?" She rose in amazement; he was between her and the door. "Surely, this is extraordinary, Mr. Glover."

"Only a moment. I shall have days enough of silence. I dread to shock or anger you. But this is one reason why I tried to keep away from you—just this—because I— And you, in unthinking innocence, kept me from my intent to escape this moment. Your displeasure was hard to bear, but your kindness has undone me. Believe me or not I did fight, a gentleman, even though I have fallen, a lover."

The displeasure of her eyes as she faced him was her only reply. Indeed, he made hardly an effort to support her look and she swept past him into the car.

The Brock train lay all next day in the Medicine Bend yard. A number of the party, with horses and guides, rode to the Medicine Springs west of the town. Glover, buried in drawings and blueprints, was in his office at the Wickiup all day with Manager Bucks and President Brock.

Late in the afternoon the attention of Gertrude, reading alone in her car, was attracted to a stout boy under an enormous hat clambering with difficulty up the railing of the observation platform. In one arm he struggled for a while with a large bundle wrapped in paper, then dropping back he threw the package up over the rail, and starting empty-handed gained the platform and picked up his parcel. He fished a letter from his pistol pocket, stared fearlessly in at Gertrude Brock and knocked on the glass panel between them.

"Laundry parcels are to be delivered to the porter in the forward car," said Gertrude, opening the door slightly.

As she spoke the boy's hat blew off and sailed down the platform, but he maintained some dignity. "I don't carry laundry. I carry telegrams. The front door was locked. I seen you sitting in there all alone, and I've got a note and had orders to give it to you personally, and this package personally, and not to nobody else, so I climbed over."

"Stop a moment," commanded Gertrude, for the heavy messenger was starting for the railing before she quite comprehended. "Wait until I see what you have here." The boy, with his hands on the railing, was letting himself down.

"My hat's blowin' off. There ain't any answer and the charges is paid."

"Will you wait?" exclaimed Gertrude, impatiently. The very handwriting on the note annoyed her. While unfamiliar, her instinct connected it with one person from whom she was determined to receive no communication. She hesitated as she looked at her carefully written name. She wanted to return the communication unopened; but how could she be sure who had sent it? With the impatience of uncertainty she ripped open the envelope.

The note was neither addressed nor signed.

"I have no right to keep this after you leave; perhaps I had no right to keep it at all. But in returning it to you I surely may thank you for the impulse that made you throw it over me the morning I lay asleep behind the Spider dike."

She tore the package partly open—it was her Newmarket coat. Bundling it up again she walked hastily to her compartment. For some moments she remained within; when she came out the messenger boy, his hat now low over his ears, was sitting in her chair looking at the illustrated paper she had laid down. Gertrude suppressed her astonishment; she felt somehow overawed by the unconventionalities of the West.

"Boy, what are you doing here?"

"You said, wait," answered the boy, taking off his hat and rising.

"Oh, yes. Very well; no matter."

"Ma'am?"

"No matter."

"Does that mean for me to wait?"

"It means you may go."

He started reluctantly. "Gee," he exclaimed, under his breath, looking around, "this is swell in here, ain't it?"

"See here, what is your name?"

"Solomon Battershawl, but most folks call me Gloomy."

"Gloomy! Where did you get that name?"

"Mr. Glover."

"Who sent you with this note?"

"I can't tell. He gave me a dollar and told me I wasn't to answer any questions."

"Oh, did he? What else did he tell you?"

"He said for me to take my hat off when I spoke to you, but my hat blowed off when you spoke to me."

"Unfortunate! Well, you are a handsome fellow, Gloomy. What do you do?"

"I'm a railroad man."

"Are you? How fine. So you won't tell who sent you."

"No, ma'am."

"What else did the gentleman say?"

"He said if anybody offered me anything I wasn't to take anything."

"Did he, indeed, Gloomy?"

"Yes'm."

She turned to the table from where she was sitting and took up a big box. "No money, he meant."

"Yes'm."

"How about candy?"

Solomon shifted.

"He didn't mention candy?"

"No'm."

"Do you ever eat candy?"

"Yes'm."

"This is a box that came from Pittsburg only this morning for me. Take some chocolates. Don't be afraid; take several. What is your last name?"

"Battershawl."

"Gloomy Battershawl; how pretty. Battershawl is so euphonious."

"Yes'm."

"Who is your best friend among the railroad men?"

"Mr. Duffy, our chief despatcher. I owe my promotion to 'im," said Solomon, solemnly.

"But who gives you the most money, I mean. Take a large piece this time."

"Oh, there ain't anybody gives me any money, much, exceptin' Mr. Glover. I run errands for him."

"What is the most money he ever gave you for an errand, Gloomy?"

"Dollar, twice."

"So much as that?"

"Yes'm."

"What was that for?"

"The first time it was for taking his washing down to the Spider to him on Number Two one Sunday morning."

This being a line of answer Gertrude had not expected to develop she started, but Solomon was under way. "Gee, the river w's high that time. He was down there two weeks and never went to bed at all, and came up special in a sleeper, sick, and I took care of him. Gee, he was sick."

"What was the matter?"

"Noomonia, the doctor said."

"And you took care of him!"

"Me an' the doctor."

"What was the other errand he gave you a dollar for?"

"Dassent tell."

"How did you know it was I you should give your note to?"

"He told me it was for the brown-haired young lady that walked so straight—I knew you all right—I seen you on horseback. I guess I'll have to be going 'cause I got a lot of telegrams to deliver up town."

"No hurry about them, is there?"

"No, but's getting near dinner time. Good-by."

"Wait. Take this box of candy with you."

Solomon staggered. "The whole box?"

"Certainly."

"Gee!"

He slid over the rail with the candy under his arm.

When he disappeared, Gertrude went back to her stateroom, closed the door, though quite alone in the car, and re-read her note.

"I have no right to keep this after you leave; perhaps I had no right to keep it at all. But in returning it to you I surely may thank you for the impulse that made you throw it over me the morning I lay asleep behind the Spider dike."

It was he, then, lying in the rain, ill then, perhaps—nursed by the nondescript cub that had just left her.

The Newmarket lay across the berth—a long, graceful garment. She had always liked the coat, and her eye fell now upon it critically, wondering what he thought of the garment upon making so unexpected an acquaintance with her intimate belongings. Near the bottom of the lining she saw a mud stain on the silk and the pretty fawn melton was spotted with rain. She folded it up before the horseback party returned and put it away, stained and spotted, at the bottom of her trunk.



CHAPTER XI

IN THE LALLA ROOKH

The car in itself was in no way remarkable. A twelve-section and drawing-room, mahogany-finish, wide-vestibule sleeper, done in cream brown, hangings shading into Indian reds—a type of the Pullman car so popular some years ago for transcontinental travel; neither too heavy for the mountains nor too light for the pace across the plains.

There were many features added to the passenger schedule on the West End the year Henry S. Brock and his friends took hold of the road, but none made more stir than the new Number One, run then as a crack passenger train, a strictly limited, vestibuled string, with barbers, baths, grill rooms, and five-o'clock tea. In and out Number One was the finest train that crossed the Rockies, and bar nobody's.

It was October, with the Colorado travel almost entirely eastbound and the California travel beginning, westbound, and the Lalla Rookh sleeper being deadheaded to the coast on a special charter for an O. and O. steamer party; at least, that was all the porter knew about its destination, and he knew more than anyone else.

At McCloud, where the St. Louis connection is made, Number One sets out a diner and picks up a Portland sleeper—so it happened that the Lalla Rookh, hind car to McCloud, afterward lay ahead of the St. Louis car, and the trainmen passed, as occasion required, through it—lighted down the gloomy aisle by a single Pintsch burner, choked to an all-night dimness.

But on the night of October 3d, which was a sloppy night in the mountains, there was not a great deal to take anybody back through the Lalla Rookh. Even the porter of the dead car deserted his official corpse, and after Number One pulled out of Medicine Bend and stuck her slim, aristocratic nose fairly into the big ranges the Lalla Rookh was left as dead as a stringer to herself and her reflections—reflections of brilliant aisles and staterooms inviting with softened lights, shed on couples that resented intrusion; of sections bright with lovely faces and decks ringing with talk and laughter; of ventilators singing of sunshine within, and of night and stars and waste without—for the Lalla Rookh carried only the best people, and after the overland voyage on her tempered springs and her yielding cushions they felt an affection for her. When the Lalla Rookh lived she lived; but to-night she was dead.

This night the pretty car sped over the range a Cinderella deserted, her linen stored and checked in her closets, her pillows bunked in her seats, and her curtains folded in her uppers, save and except in one single instance—Section Eleven, to conform to certain deeply held ideas of the porter, Raz Brown, as to what might and might not constitute a hoodoo, was made up. Raz Brown did not play much: he could not and hold his job; but when he did play he played eleven always whether it fell between seven, twenty-seven, or four, forty-four. And whenever Raz Brown deadheaded a car through, he always made up section eleven, and laid the hoodoo struggling but helpless under the chilly linen sheets of the lower berth.

Glover had spent the day without incident or excitement on the Wind River branches, and the evening had gone, while waiting to take a train west to Medicine Bend, in figuring estimates at the agent's desk in Wind River station. He was working night and day to finish the report that the new board was waiting for on the rebuilding of the system.

At midnight when he boarded the train he made his way back to look for a place to stretch out until two o'clock.

The Pullman conductor lay in the smoking-room of the head 'Frisco car dreaming of his salary—too light to make any impression on him except when asleep. It seemed a pity to disturb an honest man's dreams, and the engineer passed on. In the smoking-room of the next car lay a porter asleep. Glover dropped his bag into a chair and took off his coat. While he was washing his hands the train-conductor, Billy O'Brien, came in and set down his lantern. Conductor O'Brien was very much awake and inclined rather to talk over a Mexican mining proposition on which he wanted expert judgment than to let Glover get to bed. When the sleepy man looked at his watch for the fifth time, the conductor was getting his wind for the dog-watch and promised to talk till daylight.

"My boy, I've got to go to bed," declared Glover.

"Every sleeper is loaded to the decks," returned O'Brien. "This is the most comfortable place you'll find."

"No, I'll go forward into the chair-car," replied Glover. "Good-night."

"Stop, Mr. Glover; if you're bound to go, the Lalla Rookh car right behind this is dead, but there's steam on. Go into the stateroom and throw yourself on the couch. This is the porter here asleep."

"William, your advice is good. I've taken it too long to disregard it now," said Glover, picking up his bag. "Good-night."

But it was not a good night; it was a bad night, and getting worse as Number One dipped into it. Out of the northwest it smoked a ragged, wet fog down the pass, and, as they climbed higher, a bitter song from the Teton way heeled the sleepers over the hanging curves and streamed like sobs through the meshed ventilators of the Lalla Rookh. It was a nasty night for any sort of a sleeper; for a dead one it was very bad.

Glover walked into the Lalla Rookh vestibule, around the smoking-room passage, and into the main aisle of the car, dimly lighted at the hind end. He made his way to the stateroom. The open door gave him light, and he took off his storm-coat, pulled it over him for a blanket, and had closed his eyes when he reflected he had forgotten to warn O'Brien he must get off at Medicine Bend.

It was unpleasant, but forward he went again to avoid the annoyance of being carried by. He could tell as he came back, by the swing, that they were heading the Peace River curves, for the trucks were hitting the elevations like punching-bags. Just as he regained the main aisle of the Lalla Rookh, a lurch of the car plumped him against a section-head. He grasped it an instant to steady himself, and as he stopped he looked. Whether it was that his eyes fell on the curtained section swaying under the Pintsch light ahead—Section Eleven made up—or whether his eyes were drawn to it, who can tell? A woman's head was visible between the curtains. Glover stood perfectly still and stared. Without right or reason, there certainly stood a woman.

With nobody whatever having any business in the car, a car out of service, carried as one carries a locked and empty satchel—yet the curtains of Section Eleven, next his stateroom, were parted slightly, and the half-light from above streamed on a woman's loose hair. She was not looking toward where he stood; her face was turned from him, and as she clasped the curtain she was looking into his stateroom. What the deuce! thought Glover. A woman passenger in a dead sleeper? He balanced himself to the dizzy wheel of the truck under him, and waited for her to look his way—since she must be looking for the porter—but the head did not move. The curtains swayed with the jerking of the car, but the woman in Eleven looked intently into the dark stateroom. What did it mean? Glover determined a shock.

"Tickets!" he exclaimed, sternly—and stood alone in the car.

"Tickets!" The head was gone; not alone that, strangely gone. How? Glover could not have told. It was gone. The Pintsch burned dim; the Teton song crooned through the ventilators; the wheels of the Lalla Rookh struck muffled at the fish-plates; the curtains of Section Eleven swung slowly in and out of the berth—but the head was not there.

A creepy feeling touched his back; his first impulse was to ignore the incident, go into the stateroom and lie down. Then he thought he might have alarmed the passenger in Eleven when he had first entered. Yet there was, officially at least, no passenger in Eleven; plainly there was nothing to do but to call the conductor. He went forward. O'Brien was sorting his collections in the smoking-room of the next car. Raz Brown, awake—nominally, at least—sat by, reading his dream-book.

"Is this the Lalla Rookh porter?" asked Glover. O'Brien nodded.

"Who's your passenger in Eleven back there?" demanded Glover, turning to the darky.

"Me?" stammered Raz Brown.

"Who's your fare in Eleven in Lalla Rookh?"

"My fare? Why, I ain't got nair 'a fare in Lalla Rookh. She's dead, boss."

"You've got a woman passenger in Eleven. What are you talking about? What's the matter with you?"

Raz Brown's eyes rolled marvellously. "'Fore God, dere ain't nobody dere ez I knows on, Mr. O'Brien," protested the surprised porter, getting up.

"There's a woman in Eleven, Billy," said Glover.

"Come on," exclaimed O'Brien, turning to the porter. "She may be a spotter. Let's see."

Raz Brown walked back reluctantly, Conductor O'Brien leading. Into the Lalla Rookh, dark and quiet, around the smoking-room, down the aisle, and facing Eleven; there the Pintsch light dimly burned, the draperies slowly swayed in front of the darkened berth. Raz Brown gripped the curtains preliminarily.

"Tickets, ma'am." There was a heavy pause.

"Tickets!" No response.

"C'nduct'h wants youh tickets, ma'am."

The silence could be cut with an axe. Raz Brown parted the curtains, peered in, opened them wider, peered farther in; pushed the curtains back with both hands. The berth was empty.

Raz looked at Conductor O'Brien. O'Brien grasped the curtains himself. The upper berth hung closed above. The lower, made up, lay untouched—the pillows fresh, the linen sheets folded back, Pullmanwise, over the dark blanket.

The porter looked at Glover. "See foh y'se'f."

Glover was impatient. "She's somewhere about the car," he exclaimed, "search it." Raz Brown went through the Lalla Rookh from vestibule to vestibule: it was as empty as a ceiling.

Puzzled and annoyed, Glover stood trying to recall the mysterious appearance. He walked back to where he had seen the woman, stood where he had stood and looked where he had looked. She had not seemed to withdraw, as he recalled: the curtains had not closed before the head; it had vanished. The wind sung fine, very fine through the copper screens, the Pintsch light flowed very low into the bright globe, the curtains swung again gracefully to the dip of the car; but the head was gone.

A discussion threw no light on the mystery. On one point, however, Conductor O'Brien was firm. While the conductor and the porter kept up the talk, Glover resumed his preparations for retiring in the stateroom, but O'Brien interfered.

"Don't do it. Don't you do it. I wouldn't sleep in that room now for a thousand dollars."

"Nonsense."

"That's all right. I say come forward."

They made him up a corner in the smoking-room of the 'Frisco car, and he could have slept like a baby had not the conviction suddenly come upon him that he had seen Gertrude Brock. Should he, after all, see her again? And what did it mean? Why was she looking in terror into his stateroom?



CHAPTER XII

A SLIP ON A SPECIAL

Glover's train pulled into Medicine Bend, in the rain, at half-past two o'clock. The face in the Lalla Rookh had put an end to thoughts of sleep, and he walked up to his office in the Wickiup to work until morning on his report. He lighted a lamp, opened his desk with a clang that echoed to the last dark corner of the zigzag hall, and, spreading out his papers, resumed the figuring he had begun at Wind River station. But the combinations which at eleven o'clock had gone fast refused now to work. The Lalla Rookh curtains intruded continually into his problems and his calculations dissolved helplessly into an idle stare at a jumble of figures.

He got up at last, restless, walked through the trainmaster's room, into the despatcher's office, and stumbled on the tragedy of the night.

It came about through an ambition in itself honorable—the ambition of Bud Cawkins to become a train-despatcher.

Bud began railroading on the Wind River. In three months he was made an agent, in six months he had become an expert in station work, an operator after a despatcher's own heart, and the life of the line; then he began looking for trouble. His quest resulted first in the conviction that the main line business was not handled nearly as well as it ought to be. Had Bud confided this to an agent of experience there would have been no difficulty. He would have been told that every agent on every branch in the world, sooner or later, has the same conviction; that he need only to let it alone, eat sparingly of brain food, and the clot would be sure to pass unnoticed.

Unfortunately, Bud concealed his conviction, and asked Morris Blood to give him a chance at the Wickiup. The first time, Morris Blood only growled; the second time he looked at the handsome boy disapprovingly.

"Want to be a despatcher, do you? What's the matter with you? Been reading railroad stories? I'll fire any man on my division that reads railroad stories. Don't be a chump. You're in line now for the best station on the division."

But compliments only fanned Bud's flame, and Morris Blood, after reasonable effort to save the boy's life, turned him over to Martin Duffy.

Now, of all severe men on the West End, Duffy is most biting. His smile is sickly, his hair dry, and his laugh soft.

"Despatcher, eh? Ha, ha, ha; I see, Bud. Coming down to show us how to do business. Oh, no. I understand; that is all right. It is what brought me here, Bud, when I was about your age and good for something. Well, it is a snap. There is nothing in the railroad life equal to a despatcher's trick. If you should make a mistake and get two trains together they will only fire you. If you happen to kill a few people they can't make anything more than manslaughter out of it—I know that because I've seen them try to hang a despatcher for a passenger wreck—they can't do it, Bud, don't ever believe it. In this state ten years is the extreme limit for manslaughter, and the only complication is that if your train should happen to burn up they might soak you an extra ten years for arson; but a despatcher is usually handy around a penitentiary and can get light work in the office, so that he's thrown more with wife poisoners and embezzlers than with cutthroats and hold-up men. Then, too, you can earn nearly as much in State's prison as you can at your trick. A despatcher's salary is high, you know—seventy-five, eighty, and even a hundred dollars a month.

"Of course, there's an unpleasant side of it. I don't want to seem to draw it too rosy. I imagine you've heard Blackburn's story, haven't you—the lap-order at Rosebud? I helped carry Blackburn out of that room"—Duffy pointed very coldly toward Morris Blood's door—"the morning we put him in his coffin. But, hang it, Bud, a death like that is better than going to the insane asylum, isn't it, eh? A short trick and a merry one, my boy, for a despatcher, say I; no insane asylum for me."

It calmed Budwiser, as the boys began to call him, for a time only. He renewed his application and was at length relieved of his comfortable station and ordered into the Wickiup as despatcher's assistant.

For a time every dream was realized—the work was put on him by degrees, things ran smoothly, and his despatcher, Garry O'Neill, soon reported him all right. A month later Bud was notified that a despatcher's trick would shortly be assigned to him, and to the boys from the branch who asked after him he sent word that in a few days he would be showing them how to do business on the main line.

The chance came even sooner. O'Neill went hunting the following day, overslept, came down without supper and could not get a quiet minute till long after midnight. Heavy stock trains crowded down over the short line. The main line, in addition to the regular traffic, had been pounded all night with government stores and ammunition, westbound. From the coast a passenger special, looked for in the afternoon, had just come into the division at Bear Dance. Garry laid out his sheet with the precision of a campaigner, provided for everything, and at three o'clock he gave Bud a transfer and ran down to get a cup of coffee. Bud sat into the chair for the first time with the responsibility of a full-fledged despatcher.

For five minutes no business confronted him, then from the extreme end of his territory Cambridge station called for orders for an extra, fast freight, west, Engine 81, and Bud wrote his first train order. He ordered Extra 81 to meet Number 50, a local and accommodation, at Sumter, and signed Morris Blood's initials with a flourish. When the trains had gone he looked over his sheet calmly until he noticed, with fainting horror, that he had forgotten Special 833, east, making a very fast run and headed for Cambridge, with no orders about Extra 81. Special 833 was the passenger train from the coast.

The sheet swam and the yellow lamp at his elbow turned green and black. The door of the operator's room opened with a bang. Bud, trembling, hoped it might be O'Neill, and staggered to the archway. It was only Glover, but Glover saw the boy's face. "What's the matter?"

Bud looked back into the room he was leaving. Glover stepped through the railing gate and caught the boy by the shoulder. "What's the matter, my lad?"

He shook and questioned, but from the dazed operator he could get only one word, "O'Neill," and stepping to the hall door Glover called out "O'Neill!"

It has been said that Glover's voice would carry in a mountain storm from side to side of the Medicine Bend yard. That night the very last rafter in the Wickiup gables rang with his cry. He called only once, for O'Neill came bounding up the long stairs three steps at a time.

"Look to your train sheet, Garry," said Glover, peremptorily. "This boy is scared to death. There's trouble somewhere."

He supported the operator to a chair, and O'Neill ran to the inner room. The moment his eye covered the order book he saw what had happened. "Extra 81 is against a passenger special," exclaimed O'Neill, huskily, seizing the key. "There's the order—Extra 81 from Cambridge to meet Number 50 at Sumter and Special 833 has orders to Cambridge, and nothing against Extra 81. If I can't catch the freight at Red Desert we're in for it—wake up Morris Blood, quick, he's in there asleep."

Blood, working late in his office, had rolled himself in a blanket on the lounge in Callahan's old room, and unfortunately Morris Blood was the soundest sleeper on the division. Glover called him, shook him, caught him by the arm, lifted him to a sitting position, talked hurriedly to him—he knew what resource and power lay under the thick curling hair if he could only rouse the tired man from his dreamless sleep. Even Blood's own efforts to rouse himself were almost at once apparent. His eyes opened, glared helplessly, sank back and closed in stupor. Glover grew desperate, and lifting Morris to his feet, dragged him half way across the dark room.

O'Neill, rattling the key, was looking on from the table like a drowning man. "Leave your key and steady him here against the door-jamb, Garry," cried Glover; "by the Eternal, I'll wake him." He sprang to the big water-cooler, cast away the top, seized the tank like a bucket, and dashed a full stream of ice-water into Morris Blood's face.

"Great God, what's the matter? Who is this? Glover? What? Give me a towel, somebody."

The spell was broken. Glover explained, O'Neill ran back to the key, and Blood in another moment bent dripping over the nervous despatcher.

The superintendent's mind working faster now than the magic current before him, listened, cast up, recollected, considered, decided for and against every chance. At that moment Red Desert answered. No breath interrupted the faint clicks that reported on Extra 81. O'Neill looked up in agony as the sounder spelled the words: "Extra 81 went by at 3.05." The superintendent and the despatcher looked at the clock; it read 3.09.

O'Neill clutched the order book, but Glover looked at Morris Blood. With the water trickling from his hair down his wrinkled face, beading his mustache, and dripping from his chin he stood, haggard with sleep, leaning over O'Neill's shoulder. A towel stuffed into his left hand was clasped forgotten at his waist. From the east room, operators, their instruments silenced, were tiptoeing into the archway. Above the little group at the table the clock ticked. O'Neill, in a frenzy, half rose out of his chair, but Morris Blood, putting his hand on the despatcher's shoulder, forced him back.

"They're gone," cried the frantic man; "let me out of here."

"No, Garry."

"They're gone."

"Not yet, Garry. Try Fort Rucker for the Special."

"There's no night man at Fort Rucker."

"But Burling, the day man, sleeps upstairs——"

"He goes up to Bear Dance to lodge."

"This isn't lodge night," said Blood.

"For God's sake, how can you get him upstairs, anyway?" trembled O'Neill.

"On cold nights he sleeps downstairs by the ticket-office stove. I spent a night with him once and slept on his cot. If he is in the ticket-office you may be able to wake him—he may be awake. The Special can't pass there for ten minutes yet. Don't stare at me. Call Rucker, hard."

O'Neill seized the key and tried to sound the Rucker call. Again and again he attempted it and sent wild. The man that could hold a hundred trains in his head without a slip for eight hours at a stretch sat distracted.

"Let me help you, Garry," suggested Blood, in an undertone. The despatcher turned shaking from his chair and his superintendent slipped behind him into it. His crippled right hand glided instantly over the key, and the Rucker call, even, sharp, and compelling, followed by the quick, clear nineteen—the call that gags and binds the whole division—the despatchers' call—clicked from his fingers.

Persistently, and with unfailing patience, the men hovering at his back, Blood drummed at the key for the slender chance that remained of stopping the passenger train. The trial became one of endurance. Like an incantation, the call rang through the silence of the room until it wracked the listeners, but the man at the key, quietly wiping his face and head, and with the towel in his left hand mopping out his collar, never faltered, never broke, minute after minute, until after a score of fruitless waits an answer broke his sending with the "I, I, Ru!"

As the reply flew from his fingers Morris Blood's eyes darted to the clock; it was 3.17. "Stop Special 833, east, quick."

"You've got them?" asked Glover, from the counter.

"If they're not by," muttered Blood.

"Red light out," reported Rucker; then three dreadful minutes and it came, "Special 833 taking water; O'Brien wants orders."

And the order went, "Siding, quick, and meet Extra 81, west, at Rucker," and the superintendent rose from the chair.

"It's all over, boys," said he, turning to the operators. "Remember, no man ever got to a railroad presidency by talking; but many men have by keeping their mouths shut. Lay Cawkins on the lounge in my room. Duffy said that boy would never do."

"What was Burling doing, Morris," asked Glover, sitting down by the stove.

"Ask him, Garry," suggested Blood. They waited for the answer.

"Were you asleep on your cot?" asked the despatcher, getting Rucker again.

"If that fellow woke on my call, I'll make a despatcher of him," declared Morris Blood, with a thrill of fine pride.

"No," answered Rucker, "I slept upstairs tonight."

The two men at the stove stared at one another. "How did you hear your call?" asked the despatcher. Again their ears were on edge.

And Rucker answered, "I always come down once in the night to put coal on the fire."

"Another illusion destroyed," smiled Morris Blood. "Hang him, I'll promote him, anyway, for attending to his fire."

"But you couldn't do that again in a thousand years, Mr. Blood," ventured a young and enthusiastic operator who had helped to lay out poor Bud Cawkins.

The mountain man looked at him coldly. "I sha'n't want to do that again in a thousand years. In the railroad life it always comes different, every time. Go to your key."

"I'm glad we got that particular train out of trouble," he added, turning to Glover when they were alone.

"What train?"

"That Special 833 is the Brock special. You didn't know it? We've been looking for them from the coast for two days."



CHAPTER XIII

BACK TO THE MOUNTAINS

The sudden appearance of Mr. Brock at any time and at any point where he had interests would surprise only those that did not know him. On the coast the party had broken up, Louise Donner going into Colorado with friends, and Harrison returning to Pittsburg.

Planning originally to recross the mountains by a southern route, and to give himself as much of a pleasure trip as he ever took, Mr. Brock changed all his plans at the last moment—a move at which he was masterly—and wired Bucks to meet him at Bear Dance for the return trip. Doctor Lanning, moreover, had advised that Marie spend some further time in the mountains, where her gain in health had been decided.

Among the features the general manager particularly wished Mr. Brock to see before leaving the mountain country was the Crab Valley dam and irrigation canal, and the second day after the president's special entered the division it was side-tracked at a way station near Sleepy Cat for an inspection of the undertaking. The trip to the canal was by stage with four horses, and the ladies had been asked to go.

The morning was so exhilarating and the ride so fast that when the head horses dipped over the easy divide flanking the line of the canal on the south, and the brake closed on the lumbering wheels, the visitors were surprised to discover almost at their feet a swarming army of men and horses scraping in the dusty bed of a long cut. There the heavy work was to be seen, and to give his party an idea of its magnitude, Bucks had ordered the stage driven directly through the cut itself. With Mr. Brock he sat up near the driver. Back of them were Doctor Lanning and Gertrude Brock; within rode Mrs. Whitney and Marie.

As the stage, getting down the high bank, lurched carefully along the scraper ways of the yellow bed, shovellers, drivers, and water-boys looked curiously at the unusual sight, and patient mules nosed meekly the alert, nervous horses that dragged the stage along the uneven way.

At the lower end of the cut a more formidable barrier interposed. A pocket of gravel on the eastern bank had slipped, engulfing a steam shovel, and a gang of men were busy about it. On a level overlooking the scene, in corduroy jackets and broad hats, stood two engineers. At times one of them gave directions to a foreman whose gang was digging the shovel out. His companion, perceiving the approach of the stage, signalled the driver sharply, and the leaders were swung to the right of the shovellers so that the stage was brought out on a level some distance away.

Bucks first recognized the taller of the two men. "There's Glover," he exclaimed. "Hello!" he called across the canal bed. "I didn't look for you here." Glover lifted his hat and walked over to the stage.

"I came up last night to see Ed Smith about running his flume under Horse Creek bridge. They cross us, you know, in the canyon there," said he, in his slow, steady way. "Just as we got on the ponies to ride down, this slide occurred——"

"Glad you couldn't get away. We want to see Ed Smith," returned Bucks, getting down. The women were already greeting Glover, and avoiding Gertrude's eye while he included her in his salutation to all, he tried to answer several questions at once. Smith, the engineer in charge of the canal, was talking with Bucks and Mr. Brock. On top of the stage Doctor Lanning was trying to persuade Gertrude not to get down; but she insisted.

"Mr. Glover will help me, I am sure," she said, looking directly at the evading Glover, who was absorbed in his talk with her sister. "I should advise you not to alight, Miss Brock," said he, unable to ignore her request. "You will sink into this dusty clay——"

"I don't mind that, but unless you will give me your hand," she interrupted, putting her boot on the foot rest to descend, "I shall certainly break my neck." When he promptly advanced she took both of his offered hands with a laugh at her recklessness and dropped lightly beside him. "May I go over where you stood?" she asked at once.

"I shouldn't," he ventured.

"But I can't see what they are doing." She walked capriciously ahead, and Glover reluctantly followed. "Why shouldn't you?" she questioned, waiting for him to come to her side.

"It isn't safe."

"Why did you stand there?"

He answered with entire composure. "What would be perfectly safe for me might be very dangerous for you."

She looked full at him. "How truly you speak."

Yet she did not stop, though at each step her feet sunk into the loosened soil.

"Pray, don't go farther," said Glover.

"I want to see the men digging."

"Then won't you come around here?"

"But may I not walk over to that car?"

"This way is more passable."

"Then why did you make the driver turn away from that side?"

"You have good eyes, Miss Brock."

"Pray, what is the matter with that man lying behind the car?"

Glover looked fairly at her at last. "A shoveller was hurt when the gravel slipped a few minutes ago. When the warning came he did not understand and got caught."

"Oh, let us get Doctor Lanning; something can be done for him."

"No. It is too late."

Horror checked her. "Dead?"

"Yes. I did not want you to know this. Your sister is easily shocked——"

She paused a moment. "You are very thoughtful of Marie. Have you a sister?"

"I haven't. Why do you ask?"

"Who taught you thoughtfulness?" she asked, gravely. He stood disconcerted. "I find consideration common among Western men," she went on, generalizing prettily; "our men don't have it. Does a life so rough and terrible as this give men the consideration that we expect elsewhere and do not find? Ah, that poor shoveller. Isn't it horrible to die so? Did everyone else escape?"

"They are ready to start, I think," he suggested, uneasily.

"Oh, are they?"

"You are coming to see us?" called Marie, leaning from the top, while Glover paused behind her sister, when they had reached the stage. He stood with his hat in his hand. The dazzling sun made copper of the swarthy brown of his lower face and brought out the white of his forehead where the hair crisped wet in the heat of the morning. Gertrude Brock, after she had gained her seat with his help, looked down while he talked; looked at the top of his head, and listening vaguely to Marie, noted his long, bony hand as it clung to the window strap—the hand of the most audacious man she had ever met in her life—who had made an avowal to her on the observation platform of her father's own car—and she mused at the explosion that would have followed had she ever breathed a syllable of the circumstance to her own fiery papa.

But she had told no one—least of all, the young man that had asked her before she left Pittsburg to marry him and was now writing her every other day—Allen Harrison. Indeed, what could be more ridiculously embarrassing than to be assailed so unexpectedly? She had no mind to make herself anyone's laughing-stock by speaking of it. One thing, however, she had vaguely determined—since Glover had frightened her she would retaliate at least a little before she returned to the quiet of Fifth Avenue.

Marie was still talking to him. "Why haven't you heard? I thought sister would have told you. The doctor says I gained faster here than anywhere between the two oceans, and we are all to spend six weeks up at Glen Tarn Springs. Papa is going East and coming back after us, and we shall expect you to come to the Springs very often."

The stage was starting. Gertrude faced backward as she sat. She could see Glover's salutation, and she waved a glove. He was as utterly confused as she could desire. She saw him rejoin his companion engineer near where lay the shoveller with the covered face, and the thought of the terrible accident depressed her. As she last saw Glover he was pointing at the faulty bank, and she knew that the two men were planning again for the safety of the men.

About Glen Tarn, now quite the best known of the Northern mountain resorts, there is no month like October: no sun like the October sun, and no frost like the first that stills the aspen. Moreover, the travel is done, the parks are deserted, the mountains robing for winter. In October, the horse, starting, shrinks under his rider, for the lion, always moving, never seen, is following the game into the valleys, leaving the grizzly to beat his stubborn retreat from the snow line alone.

Starting from the big hotel in a new direction every day the Pittsburgers explored the valleys and the canyons, for the lake and the springs nestle in the Pilot Mountains and the scenery is everywhere new. Mount Pilot itself rises loftily to the north, and from its sides may be seen every peak in the range.

One day, for a novelty, the whole party went down to Medicine Bend, nominally on a shopping expedition, but really on a lark. Medicine Bend is the only town within a day's distance of Glen Tarn Springs where there are shops; and though the shopping usually ended in a chorus of jokes, the trip on the main line trains, which they caught at Sleepy Cat, was always worth while, and the dining-car, with an elaborate supper in returning, was a change from the hotel table.

Sometimes Gertrude and Mrs. Whitney went together to the headquarters town—Gertrude expecting always to encounter Glover. When some time had passed, her failure to get a glimpse of him piqued her. One day with her aunt going down they met Conductor O'Brien. He was more than ready to answer questions, and fortunately for the reserve that Gertrude loved to maintain, Mrs. Whitney remarked they had not seen Mr. Glover for some time.

"No one has seen much of him for two weeks; he had a little bad luck," explained Conductor O'Brien.

"Indeed?"

"Three weeks ago he was up at Crab Valley. They had a cave-in on the irrigation canal and two or three men got caught under a coal platform near the steam shovel. Glover was close by when it happened. He got his back under the timbers until they could get the men out and broke two of his ribs. He went home that night without knowing of it, but a couple of days afterward he sneezed and found it out right away. Since then he's been doing his work in a plaster cast."

Their return train that day was several hours behind time and Gertrude and her aunt were compelled to go up late to the American House for supper. A hotel supper at Medicine Bend was naturally the occasion of some merriment, and the two diverted themselves with ordering a wild assortment of dishes. The supper hour had passed, the dining-room had been closed, and they were sitting at their dessert when a late comer entered the room. Gertrude touched her aunt's arm—Glover was passing.

Mrs. Whitney's first impulse was to halt the silent engineer with one of her imperative words. To think of him was to think only of his easily approachable manner; but to see him was indistinctly to recall something of a dignity of simplicity. She contented herself with a whisper. "He doesn't see us."

At the lower end of the room Glover sat down. Almost at once Gertrude became conscious of the silence. She handled her fork noiselessly, and the interval before a waitress pushed open the swinging kitchen door to take his order seemed long. The Eastern girl watched narrowly until the waitress flounced out, and Glover, shifting his knife and his fork and his glass of water, spread his limp napkin across his lap, and resting his elbow on the table supported his head on his hand.

The surroundings had never looked so bare as then, and a sense of the loneliness of the shabby furnishings filled her. The ghastliness of the arc-lights, the forbidding whiteness of the walls, and the penetrating odors of the kitchen seemed all brought out by the presence of a man alone.

Mrs. Whitney continued to jest, but Gertrude responded mechanically. Glover was eating his supper when the two rose from their table, and Mrs. Whitney led the way toward him.

"So, this is the invalid," she said, halting abruptly before him. "Mrs. Whitney!" exclaimed Glover, trying hastily to rise as he caught sight of Gertrude.

"Will you please be seated?" commanded Mrs. Whitney. "I insist——"

He sat down. "We want only to remind you," she went on, "that we hate to be completely ignored by the engineering department even when not officially in its charge."

"But, Mrs. Whitney, I can't sit if you are to stand," he answered, greeting Gertrude and her aunt together.

"You are an invalid; be seated. Nothing but toast?" objected Mrs. Whitney, drawing out a chair and sitting down. "Do you expect to mend broken ribs on toast?"

"I'm well mended, thank you. Do I look like an invalid?"

"But we heard you were seriously hurt." He laughed. "And want to suggest Glen Tarn as a health resort."

"Unfortunately, the doctor has discharged me. In fact, a broken rib doesn't entitle a man to a lay-off. I hope your sister continues to improve?" he added, looking at Gertrude.

"She does, thank you. Mrs. Whitney and I have been talking of the day we met you at the irrigation—" he did not help her to a word—"works," she continued, feeling the slight confusion of the pause. "You"—he looked at her so calmly that it was still confusing—"you were hurt before we met you and we must have seemed unconcerned under the circumstances. We speak often at Glen Tarn of the delightful weeks we spent in your mountain wilds last summer," she added.

Glover thanked her, but appeared absorbed in Mrs. Whitney's attempt to disengage her eye-glasses from their holder, and Gertrude made no further effort to break his restraint. Mrs. Whitney talked, and Glover talked, but Gertrude reserved her bolt until just before their train started.

He had gone with them, and they were standing on the platform before the vestibule steps of their Pullman car. As the last moment approached it was not hard to see that Glover was torn between Mrs. Whitney's rapid-fire talk and a desire to hear something from Gertrude.

She waited till the train was moving before she loosed her shaft. Mrs. Whitney had ascended the steps, the porter was impatient, Glover nervous. Gertrude turned with a smile and a totally bewildering cordiality on the unfortunate man. "My sister," her glove was on the hand-rail, "sends some sort of a message to Mr. Glover every time I come to Medicine Bend—but the gist of them all is that she would be very"—the train was moving and they were stepping along with it—"glad to see you at Glen Tarn before——"

"Gertrude," screamed Mrs. Whitney, "will you get on?"

Glover's eyes were growing like target-lights.

"—before we go East," continued Gertrude. "So should I," she added, throwing in the last three words most inexplicably, as she kept step with the engineer. But she had not miscalculated the effect.

"Are you to go soon?" he exclaimed. The porter followed them helplessly with his stool. Mrs. Whitney wrung her hands, and Gertrude attempted to reach the lower tread of the car step.

Someone very decidedly helped her, and she laughed and rose from his hands as lightly as to a stirrup. When she collected herself, after the pleasure of the spring, Mrs. Whitney was scolding her for her carelessness; but she was waving a glove from the vestibule at a big hat still lifted in the dusk of the platform.



CHAPTER XIV

GLEN TARN

October had not yet gone when they met again in a Medicine Bend street. Glover, leaving the Wickiup with Morris Blood, ran into Gertrude Brock coming out of an Indian curio-shop with Doctor Lanning. She began at once to talk to Glover. "Marie was regretting, yesterday, that you had not yet found your way to Glen Tarn."

The sun beat intensely on her black hat and her suit of gray. In her gloved hand she twirled the tip of her open sunshade on the pavement with deliberation and he shifted his footing helplessly. His heavy face never looked homelier than in sunshine, and she gazed at him with a calmness that was staggering. He muttered something about having been unusually busy.

"We, too, have been," smiled Gertrude, "making final preparations for our departure."

"Do you go so soon?" he exclaimed.

"We are waiting only papa's return now to say good-by to the mountains." The way in which she put it stirred him as she had intended it should—uncomfortably.

"I should certainly want to say good-by to your sister," muttered Glover. But in saying even so little his naturally unsteady voice broke one extra tone, and when this happened it angered him.

"You are not timid, are you?" continued Gertrude.

"I think I am something of a coward."

"Then you shouldn't venture," she laughed, "Marie has a scolding for you."

Morris Blood had been telling Doctor Lanning that he and Glover were to go over to Sleepy Cat on the train the doctor and Gertrude were to take back to Glen Tarn. The two railroad men were just starting across the yard to inspect an engine, the 1018, which was to pull the limited train that day for the first time. It was a new monster, planned by the modest little Manxman, Robert Crosby, for the first district run. "Help her over the pass," Crosby had whispered—the superintendent of motive power hardly ever spoke aloud—"and she'll buck a headwind like a canvas-back. Give her decent weather, and on the Sleepy Cat trail she'll run away with six, yes, eight Pullmans."

Doctor Lanning was curious to look over the new machine, the first to signalize the new ownership of the line, and Gertrude was quite ready to accept Blood's invitation to go also.

With the doctor under the superintendent's wing, Gertrude, piloted by Glover, crossed the network of tracks, asking railroad questions at every step.

Reaching the engine, she wanted to get up into the cab, to say that, before leaving the mountains forever, she had been once inside an engine. Glover, after some delay, procured a stepladder from the "rip" track, and with this the daughter of the magnate made an unusual but easy ascent to the cab. More than that, she made herself a heroine to every yardman in sight, and strengthened the new administration incalculably.

She ignored a conventional offer of waste from the man in charge of the cab, who she was surprised to learn, after some sympathetic remarks on her part, was not the engineman at all. He was a man that had something to do with horses. And when she suggested it would be quite an event for so big an engine to go over the mountains for the first time, the hostler told her it had already been over a good many times.

But Mr. Blood had an easy explanation for every confusing statement, and did not falter even when Miss Brock wanted to start the 1018 herself. He objected that she would soil her gloves, but she held them up in derision; plainly, they had already suffered. Some difficulty then arose because she could not begin to reach the throttle. Again, with much chaffing, the stepladder was brought into play, and steadied on it by Morris Blood, and coached by the hostler, the heiress to many millions grasped the throttle, unlatched it and pulled at the lever vigorously with both hands.

The packing was new, but Gertrude persisted, the bar yielded, and to her great fright things began to hiss. The engine moved like a roaring leviathan, and the author of the mischief screamed, tried to stop it, and being helpless appealed to the unshaven man to help her. Glover, however, was nearest and shut off.

It was all very exciting, and when on the turntable Gertrude was told by the doctor that her suit was completely ruined she merely held up both her blackened gloves, laughing, as Glover came up; and caught up her begrimed skirt and joined him with a flush on her cheeks as bright as a danger signal.

Some fervor of the magical day, under those skies where autumn itself is only a heavier wine than spring, something of the deep breath of the mountain scene seemed to infect her.

She walked at Glover's side. She recalled with the slightest pretty mirth his fetching the ladder—the way in which he had crossed a flat car by planting the ladder alongside, mounting, pulling the steps after him, and descending on them to the other side.

In her humor she faintly suggested his awkward competence in doing things, and he, too, laughed. As they crossed track after track she would place the toe of her boot on a rail glittering in the sun, and rising, balance an instant to catch an answer from him before going on. There was no haste in their manner. They had crossed the railroad yard, strangers; they recrossed it quite other. Their steps they retraced, but not their path. The path that led them that day together to the engine was never to be retraced.

To worry Crosby's new locomotive, Blood's car had been ordered added to the westbound limited, but neither Glover nor Blood spent any time in the private car. The afternoon went in the Pullman with Gertrude Brock and Doctor Lanning. At dinner Glover did the ordering because he had earlier planned to celebrate the promotion, already known, of Morris Blood to the general superintendency.

If there were few lines along which the construction engineer could shine he at least appeared to advantage as the host of his friend, since the ordering of a dinner is peculiarly a gentleman's matter, and even the modest complement of wine which the occasion demanded, Glover toasted in a way that revealed the boyish loyalty between the two men.

The spirit of it was so contagious that neither the doctor nor Gertrude made scruple of adding their congratulations. But the moments were fleeting and Glover, next day, could recall them up to one scene only. When Gertrude found she could not, even after a brave effort, ride with her back to the engine, and accepted so graciously Mr. Blood's offer to change seats, it brought her beside Glover; after that his memory failed.

In the morning he felt miserably overdone, as at Sleepy Cat a man might after running a preliminary half way to heaven. Moreover, when they parted he had, he remembered, undertaken to dine the following evening at the Springs.

When he entered the apartments of the Pittsburg party at six o'clock, Mrs. Whitney reproached him for his absence during their month at Glen Tarn, and in Mrs. Whitney's manner, peremptorily.

"I'm sure we've missed seeing everything worth while about here," she complained. Her annoyance put Glover in good humor. Marie met him with a gentler reproach. "And we go next week!"

"But you've seen everything, I know," he protested, answering both of them.

"Whether we have or not, Mr. Glover should be penalized for his indifference," suggested Marie. Doctor Lanning came in. "Compel him to show us something we haven't seen around the lake," suggested the doctor. "That he cannot do; then we have only to decide on his punishment."

"Oh, yes, I want to be on that jury," said Gertrude, entering softly in black.

"But is this Pittsburg justice?" objected Glover, rising at the spell of her eyes to the raillery. "Shouldn't I have a try at the scenery end of the proposition before sentence is demanded?"

"Justify quickly, then," threatened Marie, as they started for the dining-room; "we are not trifling."

"Of course you've been here a month," began Glover, when the party were seated.

"Yes."

"Out every day."

"Yes."

"The guides have all your money?"

"Yes."

"Then I stake everything on a single throw——"

"A professional," interjected Doctor Lanning.

"Only desperate gamesters stake all on a single throw," said Gertrude warningly.

"I am a desperate gamester," said Glover, "and now for it. Have you seen the Devil's Gap?"

A chorus of derision answered.

"The very first day—the very first trip!" cried Mrs. Whitney, raising her tone one note above every other protest.

"And you staked all on so wretched a chance?" exclaimed Gertrude. "Why, Devil's Gap is the stock feature of every guide, good, bad, and indifferent, at the Springs."

"I have staked more at heavier odds," returned Glover, taking the storm calmly, "and won. Have you made but one trip, when you first came, do you say?"

"The very first day."

"Then you haven't seen Devil's Gap. To see it," he continued, "you must see it at night."

"At night?"

"With the moon rising over the Spanish Sinks."

"Ah, how that sounds!" exclaimed Marie.

"To-night we have full moon," added Glover. "Don't say too lightly you have seen Devil's Gap, for that is given to but few tourists."

"Do not call us tourists," objected Gertrude.

"And from where did you see Devil's Gap—The Pilot?"

"No, from across the Tarn."

If the expression of Glover's face, returning somewhat the ridicule heaped on him, was intended to pique the interest of the sightseers it was effective. He was restored, provisionally, to favor; his suggestion that after dinner they take horses for the ride up Pilot Mountain to where the Gap could be seen by moonlight was eagerly adopted, and Mrs. Whitney's objection to dressing again was put down. Marie, fearing the hardship, demurred, but Glover woke to so lively interest, and promised the trip should be so easy that when she consented to go he made it his affair to attend directly to her comfort and safety.

He summoned one particular liveryman, not a favorite at the fashionable hotel, and to him gave especial injunctions about the horses. The girths Glover himself went over at starting, and in the riding he kept near Marie.

Lighted by the stars, they left the hotel in the early evening. "How are you to find your way, Mr. Glover?" asked Marie, as they threaded the path He led her into after they had reached the mountain. "Is this the road we came on?"

"I could climb Pilot blindfolded, I reckon. When we came in here I ran surveys all around the old fellow, switchbacks and everything. The line is a Chinese puzzle about here for ten miles. The path you're on now is an old Indian trail out of Devil's Gap. The guides don't use it because it is too long. The Gap is a ten-dollar trip, in any case, and naturally they make it the shortest way."

For thirty minutes they rode in darkness, then leaving a sharp defile they emerged on a plateau.

Across the Sinks the moon was rising full and into a clear sky. To the right twinkled the lights of Glen Tarn, and below them yawned the unspeakable wrench in the granite shoulders of the Pilot range called Devil's Gap. Out of its appalling darkness projected miles of silvered spurs tipped like grinning teeth by the light of the moon.

"There are a good many Devil's Gaps in the Rockies," said Glover, after the silence had been broken; "but, I imagine, if the devil condescends to acknowledge any he wouldn't disclaim this."

Gertrude stood beside her sister. "You are quite right," she admitted. "We have spent our month here and missed the only overpowering spectacle. This is Dante."

"Indeed it is," he assented, eagerly. "I must tell you. The first time I got into the Gap with a locating party I had a volume of Dante in my pack. It is an unfortunate trait of mine that in reading I am compelled to chart the topography of a story as I go along. In the 'Inferno' I could never get head or tail of the topography. One night we camped on this very ledge. In the night the horses roused me. When I opened the tent fly the moon was up, about where it is now. I stood till I nearly froze, looking—but I thought after that I could chart the 'Inferno.' If it weren't so dry, or if we were going to stay all night, I should have a camp-fire; but it wouldn't do, and before you get cold we must start back.

"See," he pointed, far down on the left. "Can you make out that speck of light? It is the headlight of a freight train crawling up the range from Sleepy Cat. When the weather is right you can see the white head of Sleepy Cat Mountain from this spot. That train will wind around in sight of this knob for an hour, climbing to the mining camps."

Doctor Lanning called to Marie. Gertrude stood with Glover.

"Is that the desert of the Spanish Sinks?" she asked, looking into the stream of the moon.

"Yes."

"Is that where you were lost two days?"

"My horse got away. Have you hurt your hand?"

She was holding her right hand in her left. "I tore my glove on a thorn, coming up. It is not much."

"Is it bleeding?"

"I don't know; can you see?"

She drew down the glove gauntlet and held her hand up. If his breath caught he did not betray it, but while he touched her she could very plainly feel his hand tremble; yet for that matter his hand, she knew, trembled frequently. He struck a match. It was no part of her audacity to betray herself, and she stepped directly between the others and the little blaze and looked into his face while he Inspected her wrist. "Can you see?"

"It is scratched badly, but not bleeding," he answered.

"It hurts."

"Very likely; the wounds that hurt most don't always bleed," he said, evenly. "Let us go."

"Oh, no," she said; "not quite yet. This is unutterable. I love this."

"Your aunt, I fear, is not interested. She is complaining of the cold. I can't light a fire; the mountain is all timber below——"

"Aunt Jane would complain in heaven, but that wouldn't signify she didn't appreciate it. Why are you so quickly put out? It isn't like you to be out of humor." She drew on her glove slowly. "I wish you had this wrist——"

"I wish to God I had." The sudden words frightened her. She showed her displeasure in half turning away, then she resolutely faced him. "I am not going to quarrel with you even if you make fun of me——"

"Fun of you?"

"Even if you put an unfair sense on what I say."

"I meant what I said in every sense, either to take the pain or—the other. I couldn't make fun of you. Do you never make fun of me, Miss Brock?"

"No, Mr. Glover, I do not. If you would be sensible we should do very well. You have been so kind, and we are to leave the mountains so soon, we ought to be good friends."

"Will you tell me one thing, Miss Brock—are you engaged?"

"I don't think you should ask, Mr. Glover. But I am not engaged—unless that in a sense I am," she added, doubtfully.

"What sense, please?"

"That I have given no answer. Are you still complaining of the cold, Aunt Jane?" she cried, in desperation, turning toward Mrs. Whitney. "I find it quite warm over here. Mr. Glover and I are still watching the freight train. Come over, do."

Going back, Glover rode near to Gertrude, who had grown restless and imperious. To hunt this queer mountain-lion was recreation, but to have the mountain-lion hunt her was disquieting.

She complained again of her wounded hand, but refused all suggestions, and gave him no credit for riding between her and the thorny trees through the canyon. It was midnight when the party reached the hotel, and when Gertrude stepped across the parlor to the water-pitcher, Glover followed. "I must thank you for your thoughtfulness of my little sister to-night," she was saying.

He was so intent that he forgot to reply.

"May I ask one question?" he said.

"That depends."

"When you make answer may I know what it is?"

"Indeed you may not."



CHAPTER XV

NOVEMBER

They walked back to the parlors. Doctor Lanning and Marie were picking up the rackets at the ping-pong table. Mrs. Whitney had gone into the office for the evening mail.

Passing the piano, Gertrude sat down and swung around toward the keys. Glover took music from the table. Unwilling to admit a trace of the unusual in the beating of her heart, or in her deeper breathing, she could not entirely control either; there was something too fascinating in defying the light that she now knew glowed in the dull eyes at her side. She avoided looking; enough that the fire was there without directly exposing her own eyes to it. She drummed with one hand, then with both, at a gavotte on the rack before her.

Overcome merely at watching her fingers stretch upon the keys he leaned against the piano.

"Why did you ask me to come up?"

As he muttered the words she picked again and again with her right hand at a loving little phrase in the gavotte. When it went precisely right she spoke in the same tone, still caressing the phrase, never looking up. "Are you sorry you came?"

"No; I'd rather be trod under foot than not be near you."

"May we not be friends without either of us being martyred? I shall be afraid ever to ask you to do anything again. Was I wrong in—assuming it would give you as well as all of us pleasure to dine together this evening?"

"No. You know better than that. I am insanely presumptuous, I know it. Let me ask one last favor——"

The gavotte rippled under her fingers. "No."

He turned away. She swung on the stool toward him and looked very kindly and frankly up. "You have been too courteous to all of us for that. Ask as many favors as you like, Mr. Glover," she murmured, "but not, if you please, a last one."

"It shall be the last, Miss Brock. I only——"

"You only what?"

"Will you let me know what day you are going, so I may say good-by?"

"Certainly I will. You will be at Medicine Bend in any case, won't you?"

"No. I have fifteen hundred miles to cover next week."

"What for—oh, it isn't any of my business, is it?"

"Looking over the snowsheds. Will you telegraph me?"

"Where?"

"At the Wickiup; it will reach me."

"You might have to come too far. We shall start in a few days."

"Will you telegraph me?"

"If you wish me to."

Eight days later, when suspense had grown sullen and Glover had parted with all hope of hearing from her, he heard. In the depths of the Heart River range her message reached him.

Every day Giddings, hundreds of miles away at the Wickiup, had had his route-list. Giddings, who would have died for the engineer, waited, every point in the repeating covered, day after day for a Glen Tarn message that Glover expected. For four days Glover had hung like a dog around the nearer stretches of the division. But the season was advanced, he dared not delegate the last vital inspection of the year, and bitterly he retreated from shed to shed until he was buried in the barren wastes of the eighth district.

The day in the Heart River mountains is the thin, gray day of the alkali and the sage. On Friday afternoon Glover's car lay sidetracked at the east end of the Nine Mile shed waiting for a limited train to pass. The train was late and the sun was dropping into an ashen strip of wind clouds that hung cold as shrouds to the north and west when the gray-powdered engine whistled for the siding.

Motionless beside the switch Glover saw down the gloom of the shed the shoes wringing fire from the Pullman wheels, and wondered why they were stopping. The conductor from the open vestibule waved to him as the train slowed and ran forward with the message.

"Giddings wired me to wait for your answer, Mr. Glover," said the conductor.

Glover was reading the telegram:

"I may start Saturday.

"G. B."

There was one chance to make it; that was to take the limited train then and there. Bidding the conductor wait he hastened to his car, called for his gripsack, gave his assistant a volley of orders, and boarded a Pullman. Not the preferred stock of the whole system would have availed at that moment to induce an inspection of Nine Mile shed.

There were men that he knew in the sleepers, but he shunned acquaintance and walked on till he found an empty section into which he could throw himself and feast undisturbed on his telegram. He studied it anew, tried to consider coolly whether her message meant anything or nothing, and gloated over the magic of the letters that made her initials: and when he slept, the word last in his heart was Gertrude.