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 pa.s.sable."
"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 circ.u.mstance 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 embarra.s.sing than to be a.s.sailed 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 canons, 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 pa.s.sed, 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 ca.n.a.l 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 a.s.sortment of dishes. The supper hour had pa.s.sed, 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 pa.s.sing.
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 gla.s.s 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 ent.i.tle 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 circ.u.mstances. We speak often at Glen Tarn of the delightful weeks we spent in your mountain wilds last summer," she added.