“THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS”
HAVING set himself to expiate his fault, Brant wore out the day in the
smoking compartment in comfortless solitude, doing penance by limiting
himself to one cigar an hour. It was dull work, but not altogether
profitless. For one thing there was plenty of time to think; and for
another the expiatory mill had a chance to grind out a goodly grist
of conclusions. The first of these was that there were going to be
more obstacles in the way to amendment than those interposed by an
uncharitable world; that apart from the sharp fight on the firing line,
he was likely to have trouble with an insubordinate garrison.
Now a fine scorn of obstacles was another of the lessons learned in
the hard school of abandonment, and Brant set his teeth on a doughty
resolution to override them in the race for retrieval, as he had
overridden them in the mad gallop pitward. Self-respect, or some
comforting measure of it, should be regained though the devil himself
held the present reversion of it. There should yet come a day, please
God, when he would not be constrained in common decency to put the
length of a Pullman car between himself and a good woman. Moreover, the
past should henceforth be a dead past, and woe betide the enemy, man or
devil, who should have the temerity to resurrect it.
The gage of battle thus thrown to the powers of darkness was promptly
taken up. After one of the many stops with the troublesome axle the
rear brakeman came into the smoking compartment and sat down, as one
weary. To begin at once the shedding of the churl shell of the master
gambler, Brant nodded pleasantly; whereupon the brakeman passed the
time of day and immediately began, railwaywise, to abuse his calling
and to ease his mind in respect of the hot box.
“She never has made a run yet without keeping everybody on the keen
jump,” he declared. “By gum! I’ve been chasing up and down with the
dope kettle ever since one o’clock this morning.”
“She?” said Brant, to whom railway speech was an unknown tongue.
“Yes; this here car--the Hesp’rus. Last time we had her it was
the back box on this end; now it’s the for’ard one under the
drawing-room--blazing away like a blooming track torch more’n half the
time.”
“Keeps you busy, does it?”
“You’re mighty right it does. And when I have a job like this, I like
to have some blame’ fool pilgrim come up and begin to jaw about the
soft snap a brakeman has now they have the air brakes.”
“Did somebody do that?”
“Sure; first thing this morning. Big chap in a linen duster and smoking
cap; same one that--” The brakeman stopped short, as one who suddenly
finds himself treading upon what may prove to be dangerous ground.
“Go on,” said Brant encouragingly.
“Well, I mean the fellow you had the scrap with. Great Moses! but he
was hot!”
“Was he? So was I.”
“You’d better believe he was. Came out of that dining room rearin’ like
a buckin’ bronco; said he was going to have the law on you, and wanted
the old man to wire ahead for a policeman to meet the train.”
“What old man--the conductor?”
“Yes; and Harker told him he couldn’t do it, because the row didn’t
happen on the train; said he didn’t know who you was, anyway. Then I
chipped in, and told ’em you was Plucky George, the man that cleaned
out the six toughs when they tried to run the bank up at Silverette.
Holy Smoke! but you ought to’ve seen old linen duster fall apart when I
said that!” The brakeman laughed joyously, but Brant groaned in spirit
at this ominous hint that his reputation meant to keep pace with him.
“You’d better believe he was rattled right!” the man went on. “He just
went yaller, and the last I saw of him he was up ahead, looking for you
so’t he could apologize. Ain’t that rich?”
“Very rich,” said Brant grimly. Then he saw his advantage and made good
use of it. “In fact, it is much too rich to spoil. Go find the fellow
and tell him I’m in a bad humour, but that he is safe as long as he
keeps away from me. Will you do that?”
“Sure,” assented the brakeman, getting upon his feet. “I’ll do better
than that: I’ll scare him till he won’t get a good breath this side o’
the Missouri River.”
Brant’s eyes narrowed, and in the turning of a leaf the mantle of
humility slipped from him and he became Brant the man-queller.
“You will do nothing of the sort. You will tell him just what I say,
and no word more or less. Now go.”
The man of dope kettles and rear-end signals was no coward, but neither
was he minded to pick a quarrel with the hero of a dozen savage
battles. Brant let him get to the door and then called him back:
“Where does your run end?”
“Voltamo; next stop but one.”
“Then you don’t go into Denver?”
“No.”
“But some time you may. In that case, it will be as well for you to
forget what little you may happen to know about me. Do you understand?”
“You’d better believe I do. I can hold my jaw with anybody when I have
to; and I don’t have to be hit with a club neither.”
“Good. Have a cigar--and don’t forget what I say.”
The brakeman took the proffered cigar and vanished; and thereupon Brant
began to repent once more and to grope for the lost mantle of humility.
Here on the very heels of his good resolutions he had balked at one of
the smallest of the obstacles, bullying a man in his displeasure and
trading upon his reputation as a man-queller like any desperado of the
camps. It was humiliating, but it proved the wisdom of the smoking-room
exile. Truly, he was far enough from being a fitting companion for the
young woman in Section Six.
As he had predicted, the train lost time steadily throughout the day,
and an early supper was served at the regular dinner station. Brant
went to the dining room with the other passengers, and when Miss
Langford did not appear, he sent the porter to her with a luncheon and
a cup of tea.
“It is about what I had a right to expect,” he told himself when he was
once more back in the solitude of the smoke den. “She was afraid to
trust herself in the same dining room with me. Why the devil couldn’t
I have held my cursed temper just ten seconds longer? Here I’ve had to
sit all day and eat my heart out, when I might have been getting miles
away from the old life in her company. What a fool a man can make of
himself when he tries!”
“That is a fact,” said a voice from the opposite seat; and Brant, who
had been staring gloomily out of the window at the wall of blackness
slipping past the train, and so was unaware that he was not alone, was
unreasonable enough to be angry.
“What’s that you say?” he began wrathfully, turning upon his
commentator; but the pleasant face of the young man in the opposite
seat was of the kind which disarms wrath.
“It’s on me,” he laughed. “I beg your pardon. I spoke without thinking,
but what you said about the fool-making faculty calls for general
ratification. We all have it.”
Brant nodded, and the newcomer relighted his cigar, which had gone out
in the explanation. “Going in to Denver?” he asked, willing to let
interest atone for impudence.
“Yes.”
“Wish I were. I’ve been out a week now, and I’m beginning to long for
the fleshpots.”
“You have my sympathy if you have to stop overnight anywhere between
this and Denver,” said Brant, who knew the country.
“Luckily, I don’t have to. I am merely riding down to the meeting point
with Number Three to kill time. I have to go back to Voltamo to-night.”
Brant laughed. “Do you find it cheaper to ride than to wait?”
“It is quite as cheap in my case; the railway company has to foot the
bills, anyway.”
“Oh--you are in the service, are you?”
“Yes.”
“Engineer corps?”
“No; operating department. I am chief clerk in the superintendent’s
office.”
They smoked companionably for a while, and then Brant said: “Perhaps
you can tell me some of the things I want to find out. Who is your
chief engineer now?”
“Colonel Bowran.”
“Good fellow?”
“Out of sight; gentleman of the old school, you know; West Point,
regular army, and all that. They say he won’t hire a chainman unless he
is a college graduate.”
“Is his office in Denver?”
“Yes; right next door to ours.”
“All of which is comforting,” said Brant. “I hope you will have me for
a neighbour. I am going to try for a billet on the C. E. & W.”
“Good!” exclaimed the chief clerk, rising at the sound of the
locomotive whistle. “My name’s Antrim, and you will find me in
Superintendent Craig’s office. Latchstring hangs on the outer wall.”
“And my name is Brant. Do you quit us here?”
“Got to do it--wish I hadn’t, now. Glad to have met you, I’m sure.
Don’t forget to hunt me up. Good night.”
They shook hands heartily at parting. It was Colorado, in the day
when strangers became friends--or enemies--on the spot; when one
unconsciously dropped the “Mr.” in an hour, and then slipped easily
around the surname to hobnob with Tom, Dick, or Harry in the first
interview.
For the exile the little chat with the chief clerk was heartening in
its way; and when the train was once more swaying and lurching along
its crooked course down the cañon he looked at his watch and figured
out the probable arriving time.
“Eleven hours late; that will make it ten o’clock in Denver. I wonder
if Miss Langford will find somebody to look after her when she gets in.
If she doesn’t----”
The interruption was the advent of the porter. The negro had been
trying to get speech with his patron for half an hour, but he was much
too discreet to deliver his message in Antrim’s presence.
“’Bout de supper, sah; de lady in lower Six say, T’ank you kin’ly, sah,
and would you-all be so kind and step back in de cyar a minute?”
“Certainly.” Brant rose to comply, but he was no sooner on his feet
than he was thrown violently all across the compartment.
“Golly Lawd! she’s on de ties!” gasped the negro, and the exclamation
ended in a yell of terror.
Brant kept his head, and thought only of the young woman alone in the
body of the car. With the floor heaving and bounding under him like
the deck of a storm-tossed ship, he darted out of the smoking-room and
flung himself against the swinging door in the narrow side vestibule.
It was jammed, but the glass of the upper panel fell in fragments under
his blow, and he was past the obstruction when the end came. The heavy
sleeper lurched first to the right, reeled drunkenly for a critical
instant on the brink of the embankment facing the river, righted itself
with a jerk when draw bars and safety chains gave way, and then settled
back to topple over against the cañon wall, stopping with a crash that
sent Brant to his knees just as he was starting down the aisle.
The broken glass was still falling from the shattered deck lights when
he reached Section Six. The young woman was unhurt, but she was very
pale, and the gray eyes were full of terror.
“Don’t faint,” said Brant very gently, though he was wondering what he
should do in case she did. “It is all over now, I think.”
“But the others?” she faltered.
“Let us hope that the other cars have kept the track--that it is only
the ‘wreck of the Hesperus.’”
She smiled at the conceit, and asked what they should do.
“If you will promise not to faint while I am gone, I’ll go and find
out. There is no danger now.”
“I’m not going to faint; but please don’t be gone long.”
He was back in a moment, gathering up her belongings.
“There is nothing smashed but our car,” he explained. “They will leave
flagmen with it, and go on to Denver with the remainder of the train.
Will you take my arm?”
The wrecked sleeper was already surrounded by a throng of curious
passengers and anxious trainmen, and ready hands were extended to help
them down from the uptilted platform. But Brant put them all aside, and
lifted his companion to the ground as if the right were his alone.
“It is all right, Mr. Harker,” he said, singling out the conductor.
“I mean, we are all out. There was no one else in the car except the
porter, and he isn’t hurt.”
They made their way through the throng of curious ones, and so on down
the track to the train. Brant found a seat in the day coach, disposed
his charge comfortably therein, and then, once more laying hold of his
courage, sat down beside her.
“I am not going to leave you again until I see you safe in Denver,” he
asserted; “that is, unless you send me away.”
“I didn’t send you away this morning,” she rejoined, with a smile that
went far toward making him forget for the moment who and what he was.
“I know you didn’t; but you had a right to. And after what I had done,
there was nothing for it but to take myself off.”
She did not speak until the train was once more lurching on its way.
Then she said: “I thought at the time you were very patient; and--and I
think so still.”
“Do you, really? That is very good of you; but I think I don’t deserve
it. My first thought should have been for you, and I might have kept my
temper for another half minute.”
Now this young woman could rejoice in an excellent upbringing, as will
presently appear, and she knew perfectly well that Brant was right.
But where is the woman, old or young, who does not secretly glory in
a vigorous championship of her rights, even at the expense of the
proprieties?
So she spoke him fair, telling him that she was sending for him at the
moment of the accident to thank him and to pay him for her supper. Nay,
more: she made the next two hours so pleasant for him that they were as
but a watch in the night, and their flitting seemed to push his life in
the camps into a comfortably remote past.
And so they chatted amicably until the outlying lights of Denver began
to flash past the windows; and then Brant bethought him of her further
well-being.
“Will there be some one at the train to meet you?” he inquired.
“No; but my street-car line is only a block from the depot, and the car
takes me almost to our door.”
“I will put you on the car,” he said; and this he did some few minutes
later, bidding her “Good night,” and standing in the street to catch a
last glimpse of her as the car droned away to the northward. Then he
turned away to seek a hotel, and was well uptown before he remembered
that he had not thought to ask her address, or to ask if he might call
upon her.
“But that is all right,” he mused. “Denver isn’t London, and if I can
ever pull myself up into the ranks of the well-behaved, I shall find
her.”