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 a.s.sociate 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 a.s.sociated 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 pa.s.sed?"
"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 gla.s.s 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 n.o.body 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 ill.u.s.trated 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?"