"I suppose so. I"m going forward presently to try to get Mr. Burton and his wife to take my place with the party for the day."
"Not Mr. John Burton, of the Colorado & Utah?"
"Yes; do you know him?"
"Only through Gertrude; she met them when she was out here last year, and she likes Mrs. Burton very much indeed."
"I"m glad of that," said Brockway, with great _navete_; "they are very good friends of mine."
In the pause that succeeded he was reminded that his way and Gertrude"s would shortly diverge again, and in the face of that thought he could not well help asking questions.
"I suppose you are going straight on to Utah," he said, not daring to hope for a negative reply.
"Not to-day. I believe it is Mr. Vennor"s plan to go on to-morrow morning."
When he realized what this meant for him, Brockway forgave his evil genius in the Tadmor. Then he gasped to think how near he had come to missing his last chance of seeing Gertrude. But he must know more of the movements of the President"s party.
"Will you go to a hotel?" he inquired.
"I think not. I heard Mr. Vennor order dinner in the car, so I presume we shall make it our headquarters during the day."
Brockway reflected that the private car would doubtless be side-tracked on the spur near the telegraph office in the Union Depot, and wrote it down that prearrangement itself could do no more. When the train drew up at Bovalley a little later, he excused himself and ran quickly forward to board the Ariadne. Come what might, Burton must be over-persuaded; the thirty-odd must be given no chance to defeat the Heaven-born opportunity made possible by the pertinacity of the gadfly.
So marched the intention, but the fates willed delay. Bovalley is but a flag-station, and the pa.s.senger agent had barely time to swing up to the rear platform of the regular sleeper when the train moved on. Then he found that he had circ.u.mvented one obstacle only to be hampered by another. The rear door of the Ariadne was locked, and the electric bell was out of repair. Wherefore it was forty minutes later, and Denver was in sight, when the rear brakeman opened the door and admitted him.
XIII
BETWEEN STATIONS
When Mrs. Dunham returned to the central compartment of the Naught-fifty, the waiter was laying the table for breakfast, and the President was looking on with the steadfast gaze which disconcerts.
"Good-morning, Cousin Jeannette. Up early to see the scenery, are you?"
The genial greeting had no hint in it of inward disquietude, past or present.
"Yes, and I wish I had been earlier. I have been out on the platform watching the mountains grow."
"Grand, isn"t it? You might have had a better view if our car had been left in its proper place in the rear; but our friend the pa.s.senger agent took good care to secure that for his own party."
Mrs. Dunham was inclined to be charitable. "I fancy he couldn"t help it.
From what he tells me, his people must be very exacting."
"Have you seen him this morning?" the President inquired, with some small show of curiosity.
"Yes; out on the platform. He has been telling me some of his exasperating experiences."
The President smiled indulgently. "I suspect our young friend has fallen into a habit of magnifying his difficulties," he said. "It"s very easy to do, you know, when one"s business makes a fine art of exaggeration."
"Why, he doesn"t impress me that way, at all," said the good lady, who knew nothing of her cousin"s very excellent reasons for disliking Brockway. "He seems to be a very pleasant young man, and quite intelligent."
Mr. Vennor shrugged his shoulders. "I don"t question his intelligence--though it wasn"t very remarkable at the dinner-table last night. Did you happen to find out whether he is going all the way across with his party?"
"He didn"t say. His people are going up to Silver Plume to-day, but he can"t go with them. He has to stay in Denver with one of the exacting ones whose ticket is out of repair."
"Ha! that"s a very sharp little trick," said the President; but inasmuch as he did not elucidate, the chaperon misunderstood.
"To get him into trouble with the others? I fancy that is only incidental. Mr. Brockway is going to try to get Mr. Burton--our Mr.
Burton, of Salt Lake City, you know--who is on the train, to take charge of the party on the Silver Plume trip."
Mr. Vennor said, "Oh," and then the young people began to appear, and the waiter announced breakfast. During the meal the President was too deeply engrossed in the working out of a small counterplot to hear or heed much of the desultory table-talk. It was quite evident that the pa.s.senger agent had learned of the proposed stop-over in Denver, and was preparing to take advantage of it. His confidence with Mrs. Dunham was only a roundabout way of notifying Gertrude.
Mr. Vennor considered many little schemes of the frustrating sort, and finally choosing one which seemed to meet all the requirements, put it in train immediately after breakfast.
"What are you going to do with yourself to-day?" he asked of Fleetwell, when they had drawn apart and lighted their cigars.
"Don"t know," replied the collegian, between whiffs; "whatever the others want to do."
"I was just thinking," the President continued, carelessly. "The Beaswicke girls want to call on some friends of theirs, and that eliminates them. I expect to be busy all day; and Cousin Jeannette says she doesn"t care to go about. Suppose you and Gertrude take a run up into the mountains on one of the narrow-gauges. It"ll fill in the day, and you can be back in time for dinner this evening."
"I don"t mind, if Gertrude wants to go; but I don"t believe she does,"
said Fleetwell, with so little enthusiasm that the President looked at him sharply.
"Think not?"
"I"m almost sure she doesn"t," the collegian replied, placidly.
Mr. Francis Vennor was a conservative man, slow to admit even the contradiction of facts. While waiting for Gertrude the previous evening, he had convinced himself that his daughter was about to sacrifice herself. To an impartial onlooker--and he prided himself on being no less--the evidence was logically conclusive; and, notwithstanding Gertrude"s tardy denial, he still believed that his major premise was correct, or, at most, only errant in time.
Having thus set his judgment a bad example, it easily broke bounds again in the same direction. How should Fleetwell know that Gertrude would not care to spend the day in his company? Probably because they had found time before breakfast for another of their foolish disagreements. In that case, it would be the part of wisdom to separate them for the day; and a plan by which this might be accomplished, and the pa.s.senger agent checkmated at the same time, suggested itself at the instant.
"We"ll let it go at that, then," he said, answering Fleetwell"s a.s.sumption. "You can manage to wear out the day in town. Perhaps the Beaswicke girls will let you go calling with them."
"Think so? I"ll go and ask them," Fleetwell said, with more animation than he had yet exhibited; and he threw away his cigar and went about it.
The President rose and crossed over to Mrs. Dunham"s chair.
"Where is Gertrude?" he inquired.
"She complained of a headache and went to her room. Shall I call her?"
"Oh, no; but if you haven"t already done so, I wish you wouldn"t mention what Brockway told you, this morning--about his spending the day in Denver, I mean."
"Certainly not, if you wish it," the chaperon agreed; but the expression of her face was so plainly interrogative that the President was constrained to go on.
"There is nothing to be anxious about yet," he hastened to say; "but you know the old adage about the ounce of prevention. Gertrude is very self-willed, and they were together rather more than I could wish, last summer."