BACK TO THE MOUNTAINS
The sudden appearance of Mr. Brock at any time and at any point where
he had interests would surprise only those that did not know him. On
the coast the party had broken up, Louise Donner going into Colorado
with friends, and Harrison returning to Pittsburg.
Planning originally to recross the mountains by a southern route, and
to give himself as much of a pleasure trip as he ever took, Mr. Brock
changed all his plans at the last moment--a move at which he was
masterly--and wired Bucks to meet him at Bear Dance for the return
trip. Doctor Lanning, moreover, had advised that Marie spend some
further time in the mountains, where her gain in health had been
decided.
Among the features the general manager particularly wished Mr. Brock to
see before leaving the mountain country was the Crab Valley dam and
irrigation canal, and the second day after the president's special
entered the division it was side-tracked at a way station near Sleepy
Cat for an inspection of the undertaking. The trip to the canal was by
stage with four horses, and the ladies had been asked to go.
The morning was so exhilarating and the ride so fast that when the head
horses dipped over the easy divide flanking the line of the canal on
the south, and the brake closed on the lumbering wheels, the visitors
were surprised to discover almost at their feet a swarming army of men
and horses scraping in the dusty bed of a long cut. There the heavy
work was to be seen, and to give his party an idea of its magnitude,
Bucks had ordered the stage driven directly through the cut itself.
With Mr. Brock he sat up near the driver. Back of them were Doctor
Lanning and Gertrude Brock; within rode Mrs. Whitney and Marie.
As the stage, getting down the high bank, lurched carefully along the
scraper ways of the yellow bed, shovellers, drivers, and water-boys
looked curiously at the unusual sight, and patient mules nosed meekly
the alert, nervous horses that dragged the stage along the uneven way.
At the lower end of the cut a more formidable barrier interposed. A
pocket of gravel on the eastern bank had slipped, engulfing a steam
shovel, and a gang of men were busy about it. On a level overlooking
the scene, in corduroy jackets and broad hats, stood two engineers. At
times one of them gave directions to a foreman whose gang was digging
the shovel out. His companion, perceiving the approach of the stage,
signalled the driver sharply, and the leaders were swung to the right
of the shovellers so that the stage was brought out on a level some
distance away.
Bucks first recognized the taller of the two men. "There's Glover," he
exclaimed. "Hello!" he called across the canal bed. "I didn't look
for you here." Glover lifted his hat and walked over to the stage.
"I came up last night to see Ed Smith about running his flume under
Horse Creek bridge. They cross us, you know, in the cañon there," said
he, in his slow, steady way. "Just as we got on the ponies to ride
down, this slide occurred----"
"Glad you couldn't get away. We want to see Ed Smith," returned Bucks,
getting down. The women were already greeting Glover, and avoiding
Gertrude's eye while he included her in his salutation to all, he tried
to answer several questions at once. Smith, the engineer in charge of
the canal, was talking with Bucks and Mr. Brock. On top of the stage
Doctor Lanning was trying to persuade Gertrude not to get down; but she
insisted.
"Mr. Glover will help me, I am sure," she said, looking directly at the
evading Glover, who was absorbed in his talk with her sister. "I
should advise you not to alight, Miss Brock," said he, unable to ignore
her request. "You will sink into this dusty clay----"
"I don't mind that, but unless you will give me your hand," she
interrupted, putting her boot on the foot rest to descend, "I shall
certainly break my neck." When he promptly advanced she took both of
his offered hands with a laugh at her recklessness and dropped lightly
beside him. "May I go over where you stood?" she asked at once.
"I shouldn't," he ventured.
"But I can't see what they are doing." She walked capriciously ahead,
and Glover reluctantly followed. "Why shouldn't you?" she questioned,
waiting for him to come to her side.
"It isn't safe."
"Why did you stand there?"
He answered with entire composure. "What would be perfectly safe for
me might be very dangerous for you."
She looked full at him. "How truly you speak."
Yet she did not stop, though at each step her feet sunk into the
loosened soil.
"Pray, don't go farther," said Glover.
"I want to see the men digging."
"Then won't you come around here?"
"But may I not walk over to that car?"
"This way is more passable."
"Then why did you make the driver turn away from that side?"
"You have good eyes, Miss Brock."
"Pray, what is the matter with that man lying behind the car?"
Glover looked fairly at her at last. "A shoveller was hurt when the
gravel slipped a few minutes ago. When the warning came he did not
understand and got caught."
"Oh, let us get Doctor Lanning; something can be done for him."
"No. It is too late."
Horror checked her. "Dead?"
"Yes. I did not want you to know this. Your sister is easily
shocked----"
She paused a moment. "You are very thoughtful of Marie. Have you a
sister?"
"I haven't. Why do you ask?"
"Who taught you thoughtfulness?" she asked, gravely. He stood
disconcerted. "I find consideration common among Western men," she
went on, generalizing prettily; "our men don't have it. Does a life so
rough and terrible as this give men the consideration that we expect
elsewhere and do not find? Ah, that poor shoveller. Isn't it horrible
to die so? Did everyone else escape?"
"They are ready to start, I think," he suggested, uneasily.
"Oh, are they?"
"You are coming to see us?" called Marie, leaning from the top, while
Glover paused behind her sister, when they had reached the stage. He
stood with his hat in his hand. The dazzling sun made copper of the
swarthy brown of his lower face and brought out the white of his
forehead where the hair crisped wet in the heat of the morning.
Gertrude Brock, after she had gained her seat with his help, looked
down while he talked; looked at the top of his head, and listening
vaguely to Marie, noted his long, bony hand as it clung to the window
strap--the hand of the most audacious man she had ever met in her
life--who had made an avowal to her on the observation platform of her
father's own car--and she mused at the explosion that would have
followed had she ever breathed a syllable of the circumstance to her
own fiery papa.
But she had told no one--least of all, the young man that had asked her
before she left Pittsburg to marry him and was now writing her every
other day--Allen Harrison. Indeed, what could be more ridiculously
embarrassing than to be assailed so unexpectedly? She had no mind to
make herself anyone's laughing-stock by speaking of it. One thing,
however, she had vaguely determined--since Glover had frightened her
she would retaliate at least a little before she returned to the quiet
of Fifth Avenue.
Marie was still talking to him. "Why haven't you heard? I thought
sister would have told you. The doctor says I gained faster here than
anywhere between the two oceans, and we are all to spend six weeks up
at Glen Tarn Springs. Papa is going East and coming back after us, and
we shall expect you to come to the Springs very often."
The stage was starting. Gertrude faced backward as she sat. She could
see Glover's salutation, and she waved a glove. He was as utterly
confused as she could desire. She saw him rejoin his companion
engineer near where lay the shoveller with the covered face, and the
thought of the terrible accident depressed her. As she last saw Glover
he was pointing at the faulty bank, and she knew that the two men were
planning again for the safety of the men.
About Glen Tarn, now quite the best known of the Northern mountain
resorts, there is no month like October: no sun like the October sun,
and no frost like the first that stills the aspen. Moreover, the
travel is done, the parks are deserted, the mountains robing for
winter. In October, the horse, starting, shrinks under his rider, for
the lion, always moving, never seen, is following the game into the
valleys, leaving the grizzly to beat his stubborn retreat from the snow
line alone.
Starting from the big hotel in a new direction every day the
Pittsburgers explored the valleys and the cañons, for the lake and the
springs nestle in the Pilot Mountains and the scenery is everywhere
new. Mount Pilot itself rises loftily to the north, and from its sides
may be seen every peak in the range.
One day, for a novelty, the whole party went down to Medicine Bend,
nominally on a shopping expedition, but really on a lark. Medicine
Bend is the only town within a day's distance of Glen Tarn Springs
where there are shops; and though the shopping usually ended in a
chorus of jokes, the trip on the main line trains, which they caught at
Sleepy Cat, was always worth while, and the dining-car, with an
elaborate supper in returning, was a change from the hotel table.
Sometimes Gertrude and Mrs. Whitney went together to the headquarters
town--Gertrude expecting always to encounter Glover. When some time
had passed, her failure to get a glimpse of him piqued her. One day
with her aunt going down they met Conductor O'Brien. He was more than
ready to answer questions, and fortunately for the reserve that
Gertrude loved to maintain, Mrs. Whitney remarked they had not seen Mr.
Glover for some time.
"No one has seen much of him for two weeks; he had a little bad luck,"
explained Conductor O'Brien.
"Indeed?"
"Three weeks ago he was up at Crab Valley. They had a cave-in on the
irrigation canal and two or three men got caught under a coal platform
near the steam shovel. Glover was close by when it happened. He got
his back under the timbers until they could get the men out and broke
two of his ribs. He went home that night without knowing of it, but a
couple of days afterward he sneezed and found it out right away. Since
then he's been doing his work in a plaster cast."
Their return train that day was several hours behind time and Gertrude
and her aunt were compelled to go up late to the American House for
supper. A hotel supper at Medicine Bend was naturally the occasion of
some merriment, and the two diverted themselves with ordering a wild
assortment of dishes. The supper hour had passed, the dining-room had
been closed, and they were sitting at their dessert when a late comer
entered the room. Gertrude touched her aunt's arm--Glover was passing.
Mrs. Whitney's first impulse was to halt the silent engineer with one
of her imperative words. To think of him was to think only of his
easily approachable manner; but to see him was indistinctly to recall
something of a dignity of simplicity. She contented herself with a
whisper. "He doesn't see us."
At the lower end of the room Glover sat down. Almost at once Gertrude
became conscious of the silence. She handled her fork noiselessly, and
the interval before a waitress pushed open the swinging kitchen door to
take his order seemed long. The Eastern girl watched narrowly until
the waitress flounced out, and Glover, shifting his knife and his fork
and his glass of water, spread his limp napkin across his lap, and
resting his elbow on the table supported his head on his hand.
The surroundings had never looked so bare as then, and a sense of the
loneliness of the shabby furnishings filled her. The ghastliness of
the arc-lights, the forbidding whiteness of the walls, and the
penetrating odors of the kitchen seemed all brought out by the presence
of a man alone.
Mrs. Whitney continued to jest, but Gertrude responded mechanically.
Glover was eating his supper when the two rose from their table, and
Mrs. Whitney led the way toward him.
"So, this is the invalid," she said, halting abruptly before him.
"Mrs. Whitney!" exclaimed Glover, trying hastily to rise as he caught
sight of Gertrude.
"Will you please be seated?" commanded Mrs. Whitney. "I insist----"
He sat down. "We want only to remind you," she went on, "that we hate
to be completely ignored by the engineering department even when _not_
officially in its charge."
"But, Mrs. Whitney, I can't sit if you are to stand," he answered,
greeting Gertrude and her aunt together.
"You are an invalid; be seated. Nothing but toast?" objected Mrs.
Whitney, drawing out a chair and sitting down. "Do you expect to mend
broken ribs on toast?"
"I'm well mended, thank you. Do I look like an invalid?"
"But we heard you were seriously hurt." He laughed. "And want to
suggest Glen Tarn as a health resort."
"Unfortunately, the doctor has discharged me. In fact, a broken rib
doesn't entitle a man to a lay-off. I hope your sister continues to
improve?" he added, looking at Gertrude.
"She does, thank you. Mrs. Whitney and I have been talking of the day
we met you at the irrigation--" he did not help her to a word--"works,"
she continued, feeling the slight confusion of the pause. "You"--he
looked at her so calmly that it was still confusing--"you were hurt
before we met you and we must have seemed unconcerned under the
circumstances. We speak often at Glen Tarn of the delightful weeks we
spent in your mountain wilds last summer," she added.
Glover thanked her, but appeared absorbed in Mrs. Whitney's attempt to
disengage her eye-glasses from their holder, and Gertrude made no
further effort to break his restraint. Mrs. Whitney talked, and Glover
talked, but Gertrude reserved her bolt until just before their train
started.
He had gone with them, and they were standing on the platform before
the vestibule steps of their Pullman car. As the last moment
approached it was not hard to see that Glover was torn between Mrs.
Whitney's rapid-fire talk and a desire to hear something from Gertrude.
She waited till the train was moving before she loosed her shaft. Mrs.
Whitney had ascended the steps, the porter was impatient, Glover
nervous. Gertrude turned with a smile and a totally bewildering
cordiality on the unfortunate man. "My sister," her glove was on the
hand-rail, "sends some sort of a message to Mr. Glover every time I
come to Medicine Bend--but the gist of them all is that she would be
very"--the train was moving and they were stepping along with it--"glad
to see you at Glen Tarn before----"
"Gertrude," screamed Mrs. Whitney, "will you get on?"
Glover's eyes were growing like target-lights.
"--before we go East," continued Gertrude. "So should I," she added,
throwing in the last three words most inexplicably, as she kept step
with the engineer. But she had not miscalculated the effect.
"Are you to go soon?" he exclaimed. The porter followed them
helplessly with his stool. Mrs. Whitney wrung her hands, and Gertrude
attempted to reach the lower tread of the car step.
Someone very decidedly helped her, and she laughed and rose from his
hands as lightly as to a stirrup. When she collected herself, after
the pleasure of the spring, Mrs. Whitney was scolding her for her
carelessness; but she was waving a glove from the vestibule at a big
hat still lifted in the dusk of the platform.