The half hour went while she reflected. Going downstairs she found the news of the wreck had spread about the hotel, and widely exaggerated accounts of the disaster were being discussed. Mrs. Whitney and Marie were out sleighriding, and by the time the half hour had pa.s.sed without word from Glover, Gertrude gave way to her restlessness. She had a telegram to send to New York--an order for bonbons--and she determined to walk down to the Wickiup to send it; she might, she thought, see Glover and hear his news sooner.
When she approached the headquarters building unusual numbers of railroad men were grouped on the platform, talking. Messengers hurried to and from the roundhouse. A blown engine attached to a day coach was standing near and men were pa.s.sing in and out of the car. Gertrude made her way to the stairs un.o.bserved, walked leisurely up to the telegraph office and sent her message. The long corridors of the building, gloomy even on bright days, were quite dark as she left the operators" room and walked slowly toward the quarters of the construction department.
The door of the large anteroom was open and the room empty. Gertrude entered hesitatingly and looked toward Glover"s office. His door also was ajar, but no one was within. The sound of voices came from a connecting room and she at once distinguished Glover"s tones. It was justification: with her coin purse she tapped lightly on the door casing, and getting no response stepped inside the office and slipped into a chair beside his desk to await him. The voices came from a room leading to Callahan"s apartments.
Glover was asking questions, and a man whose voice she could now hear breaking with sobs, was answering. "Are you sure your signals were right?" she heard Glover ask slowly and earnestly; and again, patiently, "how could you be doubled up without the f.l.a.n.g.er"s leaving the track?" Then the man would repeat his story.
"You must have had too much behind you," Glover said once.
"Too much?" echoed the man, frantically. "Seven engines behind us all day yesterday. Paddy told him the minute he got in the cab she wouldn"t never stand it. He told him it as plain as a man could tell a man. Then because we went through a thousand feet in the gap like cheese he ordered us up the hill. When we struck the big drift it was slicing rock, Mr. Glover. Paddy told him she wouldn"t never stand it.
The very first push we let go in a hundred feet with the engine churning her d.a.m.ned drivers off. We went into it twice that way. I could see it was shoving the tender up in the air every time and told Doubleday--oh, if you"d been there! The next time we sent the plough through the first crust and drove a wind-pocket maybe forty or fifty yards and hit the ice with the seven engines jamming into us. My G.o.d!
she doubled up like a jack-knife--Pat, Pat, Pat."
"Can you recollect where Blood was standing when you buckled?"
"In the right gangway." There was a pause. "He must have dropped,"
she heard Glover say.
"Then he"ll never drop again, Mr. Glover, for if he slipped off the ties he"d drop a thousand feet."
"The heaviest snow is right at the top of the hill?"
"Yes, sir."
"If we can cross the hill we can find him anyway."
"Don"t try to get across that hill till you put in five hundred shovellers, Mr. Glover."
"That would take a week. If he"s alive we must get him within twenty-four hours. He may freeze to death to-night."
"Don"t try to cross that hill with a plough, Mr. Glover. Mind my words. It"s no use. I"ve bucked with you many a time--you know that."
"Yes."
"You"re going to your death when you try that."
"There"s the doctor now, Foley," Glover answered. "Let him look you over carefully. Come this way."
The voices receded. Listening to the talk, little of which she understood, a growing fear had come over Gertrude. Her eyes had pierced the gray light about her, and as she heard Glover walk away she rose hurriedly and stepped to the doorway to detain him. Glover had disappeared, but before her, stretched on the couch back of the table, lay McGraw. She knew him instantly, and so strangely did the gloom shroud his features that his steady eyes seemed looking straight at her. She divined that he had been brought back hurt. A chill pa.s.sed over her, a horror. She hesitated a moment, and, fascinated, stepped closer; then she knew she was staring at the dead.
Terror-stricken and with sinking strength she made her way to the hotel and slipped up to the parlor. Throwing off her wraps she went to the window; Glover was coming up the street. There was only a moment in which to collect herself. She hastened to her bedroom, wet her forehead with cologne, and at her mirror her fingers ran tremblingly over the coils of her hair. She caught up a fresh handkerchief for her girdle, looked for an instant appealingly into her own eyes and closed them to think. Glover rapped.
She met him with a smile that she knew would stagger his fond eyes.
She drugged his ear with a low-voiced greeting. "You are late, dearest."
He looked at her and caught her hands. As his head bent she let her lips lie in his kiss, and let his arm find her waist as he kissed her deeply again. They walked together toward the fireplace, and when she saw the sadness of his face fear in her heart gave way to pity. "What is it?" she whispered. "Tell me."
"The car has come with Doubleday and McGraw, Gertrude. The wreck was terribly fatal. Morris Blood must have jumped from the cab. The track I have told you is blasted there out of the cheek of the mountain, and it"s impossible to tell what his fate may be: but if he is alive I must find him. There is a good hope, I believe, for Morris; he is a man to squeeze through on a narrow chance. And Gertrude--I couldn"t tell you if I didn"t think you had a right to know everything I know. It breaks my heart to speak of it--McGraw is dead."
"I am so glad you told me the truth," she trembled, "for I knew it----"
"Knew it?" She confessed, hastily, how her anxiety had led her to his office, and of the terrible shock she had brought on herself. "But now I know you would not deceive me," she added; "that is why I love you, because you are always honest and true. And do you love me, as you have told me, more than all the world?"
"More than all the world, Gertrude. Why do you look so? You are trembling."
"Have you come to say good-by?"
"Only for a day or two, darling: till I can find Morris, then I come straight back to you."
"You, too, may be killed?"
"No, no."
"But I heard the man telling you you would go to your death if you attempted to cross that hill with a plough. Be honest with me; you are risking your life."
"Only as I have risked it almost every day since I came into the mountains."
"But now--now--doesn"t it mean something else? Think what it means to me--your life. Think what will become of me if you should be killed in trying to open that hill--if you should fall over a precipice as Morris Blood has fallen and lies now probably dead. Don"t go. Don"t go, this time. You have promised me you would leave the mountains, haven"t you?
Don"t risk all, dearest, all I have on earth, in an attempt that may utterly fail and add one more precious life to the lives now sacrificed. You do heed me, darling, don"t you?"
She had disengaged herself to plead; to look directly up into his perplexed eyes. He leaned an arm on the mantel, staggered. His eyes followed hers in every word she spoke, and when she ceased he stared blankly at the fire.
"Heed you?" he answered, haltingly. "Heed you? You are all in the world that I have to heed. My only wish is your happiness; to die for it, Gertrude, wouldn"t be much----"
"All, all I ask is that you will live for it."
"Worthless as I am, I have asked you to put that happiness in my keeping--do you think your lightest word could pa.s.s me unheeded? But to this, my dearest Gertrude, every instinct of manhood binds me--to go to my friend in danger."
"If you go you will take every desperate chance to accomplish your end.
Ah, I know you better than you know yourself. Ab, Ab, my darling, my lover, listen to me. Don"t; don"t go."
When he spoke she would not have known his voice. "Can I let him die there like a dog on the mountain side? Can"t you see what I haven"t words to explain as you could explain--the position it puts me in?
Don"t sob. Don"t be afraid; look at me. I"ll come back to you, darling."
She turned her tearless eyes to the mountains. "Back! Yes. I see the end. My lover will come back--come back dead. And I shall try to kiss his brave lips back to life and they will speak no more. And I shall stand when they take him from me, lonely and alone. My father that I have estranged--my foster-mother that I have withstood--my sister that I have repelled--will their tears flow for me then? And for this I broke from my traditions and cast away a.s.sociations, gave up all my little life, stood alone against my family, poured out my heart to these deserts, these mountains, and now--they rob me of my all--and this is love!"
He stood like a broken man. "G.o.d help me, have I laid on your dear head the curse of my own life? Must you, too, suffer because our perils force us lightly to p.a.w.n our lives one for another? One night in that yard"--he pointed to the window--"I stood between the rails with a switch engine running me down. I knew nothing of it. There was no time to speak, no time to think--it was on me. Had Blood left me there one second I never should have looked into your dear face. Up on the hill with Hailey and Brodie, under the gravel and shale, I should never have cost your heart an ache like this. Better the engine had struck me then and spared you now----"
"No, I say, no!" she exclaimed, wildly. "Better this moment together than a lifetime apart!"
"--For me he threw himself in front of the drivers. This moment is mine and yours because he gave his right hand for it--shall I desert him now he needs me? And so a hundred times and in a hundred ways we gamble with death and laugh if we cheat it: and our poor reward is only sometimes to win where far better men have failed. So in this railroad life two men stand, as he and I have stood, luck or ill-luck, storm or fair weather, together. And death speaks for one; and whichever he calls it is ever the other must answer. And this--is duty."
"Then do your duty."
Distinctly, and terrifying in their unexpectedness, came the words from the farther end of the parlor. They turned, stunned. Gertrude"s father was crossing the room. He raised his hand to dispel Glover"s sudden angry look. "I was lying on the couch; your voices roused me and I could not escape. You have put clearly the case you stand in,"
he spoke to Glover, "and I have intervened only to spare both of you useless agony of argument. The question that concerns you two and me is not at this moment up for decision; the other question is, and it is for you, my daughter, now, to play the woman. I have tried as I could to shield you from rough weather. You have left port without consulting me, and the storms of womanhood are on you. Sir, when do you start?"