Toppy sat and stared across the street at her with a feeling much like
awe. The girl was standing forth in the full morning sunlight, and
Toppy's first impulse was to cross the street to her, his second to hide
his face. She was small and young, the girl, and beautiful. She was a
blonde, such a blonde as is found only in the North. The sun lighted up
the aureole of light hair surrounding her head, so that even Toppy
behind the windows of the Northern Light caught a vision of its
fineness. Her cheeks bore the red of perfect health showing through a
perfect, fair complexion, and even the thick red mackinaw which she wore
did not hide the trimness of the figure beneath.
"What in the dickens is she doing here?" gasped Toppy. "She doesn't
belong in a place like this."
But if this were true the girl apparently was entirely unconscious of
it. Among that group of ox-like Slavs she stood with her little chin in
the air, as much at home, apparently, as if those men were all her good
friends. Only she looked about her now and then as if anxiously seeking
a way out of a dilemma.
"What can she be doing here?" mused Toppy. "A little, pretty thing like
her! She ought to be back home with mother and father and brother and
sister, going to dancing-school, and all the rest of it."
Toppy was no stranger to pretty girls. He had met pretty girls by the
score while at college. He had been adored by dozens. After college he
had met still more. None of them had interested him to any inconvenient
extent. After all, a man's friends are all men.
But this girl, Toppy admitted, struck him differently. He had never seen
a girl that struck him like this before. He pushed his glass to one
side. He was bored no longer. For the first time in four years the full
shame of his mode of living was driven home to him, for as he feasted
his eyes on the sun-kissed vision across the street his decent instincts
whispered that a man who squandered and swilled his life away just
because he had money had no right to raise his eyes to this girl.
"You're a waster, that's what you are," said Toppy to himself, "and
she's one of those sweet----"
He was on his feet before the sentence was completed. In her perplexity
the girl had turned to the men about her and apparently had asked a
question. At first their utter unresponsiveness indicated that they did
not understand.
Then they began to smile, looking at one another and at the girl. The
brutal manner in which they fixed their eyes upon her sent the blood
into Toppy's throat. White men didn't look at a woman that way.
Then one of the younger men spoke to the girl. Toppy saw her start and
look at him with parted lips. The group gathered more closely around.
The young man spoke again, grimacing and smirking bestially, and Toppy
waited for no more. He was a waster and half drunk; but after all he was
a white man, of the same breed as the girl on the stairs, and he knew
his job.
He came across the snow-covered street like Toppy Treplin of old bent
upon making a touchdown. Into the group he walked, head up, shouldering
and elbowing carelessly. Toppy caught the young speaker by both
shoulders and hurled him bodily back among his fellows. For an instant
they faced Toppy, snarling, their hands cautiously sliding toward hidden
knives. Then they grovelled, cringing instinctively before the better
breed.
Toppy turned to the girl and removed his cap. She had not cried out nor
moved, and now she looked Toppy squarely in the eye. Toppy promptly hung
his head. He had been thinking of her as something of a child. Now he
saw his mistake. She was young, it is true--little over twenty
perhaps--but there was an air of self-reliance and seriousness about her
as if she had known responsibilities beyond her years. And her eyes were
blue, Toppy saw--the perfect blue that went with her fair complexion.
"I beg pardon," stammered Toppy. "I just happened to see--it looked as if
they were getting fresh--so I thought I'd come across and--and see if
there was anything--anything I could do."
"Thank you," said the girl a little breathlessly. "Are--are you the
agent?"
Toppy shook his head. The look of perplexity instantly returned to the
girl's face.
"I'm sorry; I wish I was," said Toppy. "If you'll tell me who the agent
is, and so on--" he included most of the town of Rail Head in a
comprehensive glance--"I'll probably be able to find him in a hurry."
"Oh, I couldn't think of troubling you. Thank you ever so much, though,"
she said hastily. "They told me in the hotel that he was outside here
some place. I'll find him myself, thank you."
She stepped off the stairs into the snow of the street, every inch and
line of her, from her solid tan boots to her sensible tassel cap,
expressing the self-reliance and independence of the girl who is
accustomed and able to take care of herself under trying circumstances.
The bright sun smote her eyes and she blinked, squinting deliciously.
She paused for a moment, threw back her head and filled her lungs to the
full with great drafts of the invigorating November air. Her mackinaw
rose and fell as she breathed deeply, and more colour came rushing into
the roses of her cheeks. Apparently she had forgotten the existence of
the Slavs, who still stood glowering at her and Toppy.
"Isn't it glorious?" she said, looking up at Toppy with her eyes
puckered prettily from the sun. "Doesn't it just make you glad you're
alive?"
"You bet it does!" said Toppy eagerly. He saw his opportunity to
continue the conversation and hastened to take advantage. "I never knew
air could be as exciting as this. I never felt anything like it. It's my
first experience up here in the woods; I'm an utter stranger around
here."
Having volunteered this information, he waited eagerly. The girl merely
nodded.
"Of course. Anybody could see that," she said simply.
Toppy felt slightly abashed.
"Then you--you're not a stranger around here?" he asked.
She shook her head, the tassels of her cap and her aureole of light hair
tossing gloriously.
"I'm a stranger here in this town," she said, "but I've lived up here in
the woods, as you call it, all my life except the two years I was away
at school. Not right in the woods, of course, but in small towns around.
My father was a timber-estimator before he was hurt, and naturally we
had to live close to the woods."
"Naturally," agreed Toppy, though he knew nothing about it. He tried to
imagine any of the girls he knew back East accepting a stranger as a man
and a brother who could be trusted at first hand, and he failed.
"I say," he said as she stepped away. "Just a moment, please. About this
agent-thing. Won't you please let me go and look for him?" He waved his
hands at the six saloons. "You see, there aren't many places here that a
lady can go looking for a man in."
She hesitated, frowning at the lowly groggeries that constituted the
major part of Rail Head's buildings.
"That's so," she said with a smile.
"Of course it is," said Toppy eagerly. "And the chances are that your
man is in one of them, no matter who he is, because that's about the
only place he can be here. You tell me who he is, or what he is, and
I'll go hunt him up."
"That's very kind of you." She hesitated for a moment, then accepted his
offer without further parley. "It's the employment agent of the Cameron
Dam Company that I'm looking for. I am to meet him here, according to a
letter they sent me, and he is to furnish a team and driver to take me
out to the Dam."
Then she added calmly, "I'm going to keep books out there this Winter."