Virginia took the first step in the perilous path of the strategist
when she handed the incendiary telegram back to Jastrow.
“Poor Mr. Winton!” she said, with the real sympathy in the words made
most obviously perfunctory by the tone. “What a world of possibilities
there is masquerading behind that little word 'arrange.' Tell me more
about it, Mr. Jastrow. How will they 'arrange' it?”
“Winton's rearrest? Nothing easier in a tough mining-camp like
Carbonate, I should say.”
“Yes, but how?”
“I can't prophesy how Grafton will go about it, but I know what I
should do.”
Virginia's smile was irresistible, but there was a look in the deepest
depth of the brown eyes that was sifting Mr. Arthur Jastrow to the
innermost sand-heap of his desert nature.
“How would you do it, Mr. Napoleon Jastrow?” she asked, giving him the
exact fillip on the side of gratified vanity.
“Oh, I'd fix him. He is in a frame of mind right now; and by the time
the lawyers are through drilling him in the trespass affair, he'll be
just spoiling for a row with somebody.”
“Do you think so? Oh, how delicious! And then what?”
“Then I'd hire some plug-ugly to stumble up against him and pick a
quarrel with him. He'd do the rest--and land in the lock-up.”
Those who knew her best said it was a warning to be heeded in Miss
Virginia Carteret when her eyes were downcast and her voice sank to
its softest cadence.
“Why, certainly; how simple!” she said, taking her cousin's arm again;
and the secretary went in to set the wires at work in Winton's affair.
Now Miss Carteret was a woman in every fiber of her, but among her
gifts she might have counted some that were, to say the least,
super-feminine. One of these was a measure of discretion which would
have been fairly creditable in a past master of diplomacy. So, while
the sympathetic part of her was crying out for a chance to talk
Winton's threatened danger over with some one, she lent herself
outwardly to the Reverend Billy's mood--which was one of scenic
enthusiasm; this without prejudice to a growing determination to
intervene in behalf of fair play for Winton if she could find a way.
But the way obstinately refused to discover itself. The simple thing
to do would be to appeal to her uncle's sense of justice. It was not
like him to fight with ignoble weapons, she thought, and a tactful
word in season might make him recall the order to the superintendent.
But she could not make the appeal without betraying Jastrow. She knew
well enough that the secretary had no right to show her the telegrams;
knew also that Mr. Somerville Darrah's first word would be a demand to
know how she had learned the company's business secrets. Regarding
Jastrow as little as a high-bred young woman to whom sentiment is as
the breath of life can regard a man who is quite devoid of it, she was
still far enough from the thought of effacing him.
To this expedient there was an unhopeful alternative: namely, the
sending, by the Reverend Billy, or, in the last resort, by herself, of
a warning message to Winton. But there were obstacles seemingly
insuperable. She had not the faintest notion of how such a warning
should be addressed; and again, the operator at Argentine was a
Colorado and Grand River employee, doubtless loyal to his salt, in
which case the warning message would never get beyond his
waste-basket.
“Getting too chilly for you out here? Want to go in?” asked the
Reverend Billy, when the scenic enthusiasm began to outwear itself.
“No; but I am tired of the sentry-go part of it--ten steps and a
turn,” she confessed. “Can't we walk on the track a little way?”
Calvert saw no reason why they might not, and accordingly helped her
over to the snow-encrusted path between the rails.
“We can trot down and have a look at their construction camp, if you
like,” he suggested, and thitherward they went.
There was not much to see, after all, as the Reverend Billy remarked
when they had reached a coign of vantage below the curve. A string of
use-worn bunk cars; a “dinkey” caboose serving as the home on wheels
of the chief of construction and his assistant; a crooked siding with
a gang of dark-skinned laborers at work unloading a car of steel.
These in the immediate foreground; and a little way apart, perched
high enough on the steep slope of the mountain side to be out of the
camp turmoil, a small structure, half plank and half canvas--to wit,
the end-of-track telegraph office.
It was Virginia who first marked the boxed-up tent standing on the
slope.
“What do you suppose that little house-tent is for?” she asked.
“I don't know,” said Calvert. Then he saw the wires and ventured a
guess which hit the mark.
“I didn't suppose they would have a telegraph office,” she commented,
with hope rising again.
“Oh, yes; they'd have to have a wire--one of their own. Under the
circumstances they could hardly use ours.”
“No,” she rejoined absently. She was scanning the group of
steel-handlers in the hope that a young man in a billy-cock hat and
with a cigarette between his lips would shortly reveal himself. She
found him after a time and turned quickly to her cousin.
“There is Mr. Adams down by the engine. Do you think he would come
over and speak to us if he knew we were here?”
The Reverend Billy's smile was of honest admiration.
“How could you doubt it? Wait here a minute and I'll call him for
you.”
He was gone before she could reply--across the ice-bridge spanning one
of the pools, and up the rough, frozen embankment of the new line.
There were armed guards here, too, as well as at the front, and one of
them halted him at the picket line. But Adams saw and recognized him,
and presently the two were crossing to where Virginia stood waiting
for them.
“Eheu! what a little world we live in, Miss Virginia! Who would have
thought of meeting you here?” said Adams, taking her hand at the
precise elevation prescribed by good form--Boston good form.
“The shock is mutual,” she laughed. “I must say that you and Mr.
Winton have chosen a highly unconventional environment for your
sketching-field.”
“I'm down,” he admitted cheerfully; “please don't trample on me. But
really, it wasn't all fib. Jack does do things with a pencil--other
things besides maps and working profiles, I mean. Won't you come over
and let me do the honors of the studio?”--with a grandiloquent
arm-sweep meant to include the construction camp in general and the
“dinkey” caboose-car in particular.
It was the invitation she would have angled for, but she was too wise
to assent too readily.
“Oh, no; I think we mustn't. I'm afraid Mr. Winton might not like it.”
“Not like it? If you'll come he'll never forgive himself for not being
here to 'shoot up' the camp for you in person. He is away, you know;
gone to Carbonate for the day.”
“Ought we to go, Cousin Billy?” she asked, shifting, not the decision,
but the responsibility for it, to broader shoulders.
“Why not, if you care to?” said the athlete, to whom right-of-way
fights were mere matters of business in no wise conflicting with the
social ameliorations.
Virginia hesitated. There was a thing to be said to Mr. Adams, and
that without delay; but how could she say it with her cousin standing
by to make an impossible trio out of any attempted duet confidential?
A willingness to see that Winton had fair play need not carry with it
an open desertion to the enemy. She must not forget to be loyal to her
salt; and, besides, Mr. Somerville Darrah's righteous indignation was
a possibility not lightly to be ignored.
But, the upshot of the hesitant pause was a decision to brave the
consequences--all of them; so she took Calvert's arm for the slippery
crossing of the ice-bridge.
Once on his own domain, Adams did the honors of the camp as thoroughly
and conscientiously as if the hour held no care heavier than the
entertainment of Miss Virginia Carteret. He explained the system under
which the material was kept moving forward to the ever-advancing
front; let her watch the rhythmic swing and slide of the rails from
the car to the benches; took her up into the cab of the big “octopod”
locomotive; gave her a chance to peep into the camp kitchen car; and
concluded by handing her up the steps of the “dinkey.”
“Oh, how comfortable!” she exclaimed, when he had shown her all the
space-saving contrivances of the field office. “And this is where you
and Mr. Winton work?”
“It is where we eat and sleep,” corrected Adams. “And speaking of
eating: it is hopelessly the wrong end of the day,--or it would be in
Boston,--but our Chinaman won't know the difference. Let me have him
make you a dish of tea,”--and the order was given before she could
protest.
“While we are waiting for Ah Foo I'll show you some of Jack's
sketches,” he went on, finding a portfolio and opening it upon the
drawing-board.
“Are you quite sure Mr. Winton won't mind?” she asked.
“Mind? He'd give a month's pay to be here to show them himself. He is
peacock vain of his one small accomplishment, Winton is--bores me to
death with it sometimes.”
“Really?” was the mocking rejoinder, and they began to look at the
sketches.
They were heads, most of them, impressionistic studies in pencil or
pastel, with now and then a pen-and-ink bearing evidence of more
painstaking after-work. They were made on bits of map paper, the backs
of old letters, and not a few on leaves torn from an engineer's
note-book.
“They don't count for much in an artistic way,” said Adams, with the
brutal frankness of a friendly critic, “but they will serve to show
you that I wasn't all kinds of an embroiderer when I was telling you
about Winton's proclivities the other day.”
“I shouldn't apologize for that, if I were you,” she retorted. “It is
well past apology, don't you think?” And then: “What is this one?”
They had come to the last of the sketches, which was a rude map. It
was penciled on the leaf of a memorandum, and Adams recognized it as
the outline Winton had made and used in explaining the right-of-way
entanglement.
“It is a map,” he said; “one that Jack drew day before yesterday when
he was trying to make me understand the situation up here. I wonder
why he kept it? Is there anything on the other side?”
She turned the leaf, and they both went speechless for the moment. The
reverse of the scrap of cross-ruled paper held a very fair likeness of
a face which Virginia's mirror had oftenest portrayed: a sketch
setting forth in a few vigorous strokes of the pencil the
impressionist's ideal of the “goddess fresh from the bath.”
“By Jove!” exclaimed Adams, when he could find the word for his
surprise. Then he tried to turn it off lightly. “There is a good bit
more of the artist in Jack than I have been giving him credit for.
Don't you know, he must have got the notion for that between two
half-seconds--when you recognized me on the platform at Kansas City.
It's wonderful!”
“So very wonderful that I think I shall keep it,” she rejoined, not
without a touch of austerity. Then she added: “Mr. Winton will
probably never miss it. If he does, you will have to explain the best
way you can.” And Adams could only say “By Jove!” again, and busy
himself with pouring the tea which Ah Foo had brought in.
In the nature of things the tea-drinking in the stuffy “dinkey”
drawing-room was not prolonged. Time was flying. Virginia's errand of
mercy was not yet accomplished, and Aunt Martha in her character of
anxious chaperon was not to be forgotten. Also, Miss Carteret had a
feeling that under his well-bred exterior Mr. Morton P. Adams was
chafing like any barbarian industry captain at this unwarrantable
intrusion and interruption.
So presently they all forthfared into the sun-bright, snow-blinding,
out-of-door world, and Virginia gathered up her courage and took her
dilemma by the horns.
“I believe I have seen everything now except that tent-place up
there,” she asserted, groping purposefully for her opening.
Adams called up another smile of acquiescence. “That is our telegraph
office. Would you care to see it?” He was of those who shirk all or
shirk nothing.
“I don't know why I should care to, but I do,” she replied, with
charming and childlike wilfulness; so the three of them trudged up the
slippery path to the operator's den on the slope.
Not to evade his hospitable duty in any part, Adams explained the use
and need of a “front” wire, and Miss Carteret was properly interested.
“How convenient!” she commented. “And you can come up here and talk to
anybody you like--just as if it were a telephone?”
“To anyone in the company's service,” amended Adams. “It is not a
commercial wire.”
“Then let us send a message to Mr. Winton,” she suggested, playing the
part of the capricious _ingenue_ to the very upcast of a pair of
mischievous eyes. “I'll write it and you may sign it.”
Adams stretched his complaisance the necessary additional inch and
gave her a pencil and a pad of blanks. She wrote rapidly:
“Miss Carteret has been here admiring your drawings. She took one of
them away with her, and I couldn't stop her without being rude. You
shouldn't have done it without asking her permission. She says--”
“Oh, dear! I am making it awfully long. Does it cost so much a word?”
“No,” said Adams, not without an effort. He was beginning to be
distinctly disappointed in Miss Virginia, and was inwardly wondering
what piece of girlish frivolity he was expected to sign and send to
his chief. Meanwhile she went on writing:
“--I am to tell you not to get into any fresh trouble--not to let
anyone else get you into trouble; by which I infer she means that
some attempt will be made to keep you from returning on the evening
train.”
“There, can you send all that?” she asked sweetly, giving the pad to
her host.
Adams read the first part of the letter length telegram with inward
groanings, but the generous purpose of it struck him like a whip-blow
when he came to the thinly-veiled warning. Also it shamed him for his
unworthy judgment of Virginia.
“I thank you very heartily, Miss Carteret,” he said humbly. “It shall
be sent word for word.” Then, for the Reverend William's benefit:
“Winton deserves all sorts of a snubbing for taking liberties with
your portrait. I'll see he gets more when he comes back.”
Here the matter rested; and, having done what she conceived to be her
charitable duty, Virginia was as anxious to get away as heart--the
heart of a slightly bored Reverend Billy, for instance--could wish.
So they bade Adams good-by and picked their way down the frozen
embankment and across the ice-bridge; down and across and back to the
Rosemary, where they found a perturbed chaperon in a flutter of
solicitude arising upon their mysterious disappearance and long
absence.
“It may be just as well not to tell any of them where we have been,”
said Virginia in an aside to her cousin. And so the incident of
tea-drinking in the enemy's camp was safely put away like a little
personal note in its envelop with the flap gummed down.