GLEN TARN
October had not yet gone when they met again in a Medicine Bend street.
Glover, leaving the Wickiup with Morris Blood, ran into Gertrude Brock
coming out of an Indian curio-shop with Doctor Lanning. She began at
once to talk to Glover. "Marie was regretting, yesterday, that you had
not yet found your way to Glen Tarn."
The sun beat intensely on her black hat and her suit of gray. In her
gloved hand she twirled the tip of her open sunshade on the pavement
with deliberation and he shifted his footing helplessly. His heavy
face never looked homelier than in sunshine, and she gazed at him with
a calmness that was staggering. He muttered something about having
been unusually busy.
"We, too, have been," smiled Gertrude, "making final preparations for
our departure."
"Do you go so soon?" he exclaimed.
"We are waiting only papa's return now to say good-by to the
mountains." The way in which she put it stirred him as she had
intended it should--uncomfortably.
"I should certainly want to say good-by to your sister," muttered
Glover. But in saying even so little his naturally unsteady voice
broke one extra tone, and when this happened it angered him.
"You are not timid, are you?" continued Gertrude.
"I think I am something of a coward."
"Then you shouldn't venture," she laughed, "Marie has a scolding for
you."
Morris Blood had been telling Doctor Lanning that he and Glover were to
go over to Sleepy Cat on the train the doctor and Gertrude were to take
back to Glen Tarn. The two railroad men were just starting across the
yard to inspect an engine, the 1018, which was to pull the limited
train that day for the first time. It was a new monster, planned by
the modest little Manxman, Robert Crosby, for the first district run.
"Help her over the pass," Crosby had whispered--the superintendent of
motive power hardly ever spoke aloud--"and she'll buck a headwind like
a canvas-back. Give her decent weather, and on the Sleepy Cat trail
she'll run away with six, yes, eight Pullmans."
Doctor Lanning was curious to look over the new machine, the first to
signalize the new ownership of the line, and Gertrude was quite ready
to accept Blood's invitation to go also.
With the doctor under the superintendent's wing, Gertrude, piloted by
Glover, crossed the network of tracks, asking railroad questions at
every step.
Reaching the engine, she wanted to get up into the cab, to say that,
before leaving the mountains forever, she had been once inside an
engine. Glover, after some delay, procured a stepladder from the "rip"
track, and with this the daughter of the magnate made an unusual but
easy ascent to the cab. More than that, she made herself a heroine to
every yardman in sight, and strengthened the new administration
incalculably.
She ignored a conventional offer of waste from the man in charge of the
cab, who she was surprised to learn, after some sympathetic remarks on
her part, was not the engineman at all. He was a man that had
something to do with horses. And when she suggested it would be quite
an event for so big an engine to go over the mountains for the first
time, the hostler told her it had already been over a good many times.
But Mr. Blood had an easy explanation for every confusing statement,
and did not falter even when Miss Brock wanted to start the 1018
herself. He objected that she would soil her gloves, but she held them
up in derision; plainly, they had already suffered. Some difficulty
then arose because she could not begin to reach the throttle. Again,
with much chaffing, the stepladder was brought into play, and steadied
on it by Morris Blood, and coached by the hostler, the heiress to many
millions grasped the throttle, unlatched it and pulled at the lever
vigorously with both hands.
The packing was new, but Gertrude persisted, the bar yielded, and to
her great fright things began to hiss. The engine moved like a roaring
leviathan, and the author of the mischief screamed, tried to stop it,
and being helpless appealed to the unshaven man to help her. Glover,
however, was nearest and shut off.
It was all very exciting, and when on the turntable Gertrude was told
by the doctor that her suit was completely ruined she merely held up
both her blackened gloves, laughing, as Glover came up; and caught up
her begrimed skirt and joined him with a flush on her cheeks as bright
as a danger signal.
Some fervor of the magical day, under those skies where autumn itself
is only a heavier wine than spring, something of the deep breath of the
mountain scene seemed to infect her.
She walked at Glover's side. She recalled with the slightest pretty
mirth his fetching the ladder--the way in which he had crossed a flat
car by planting the ladder alongside, mounting, pulling the steps after
him, and descending on them to the other side.
In her humor she faintly suggested his awkward competence in doing
things, and he, too, laughed. As they crossed track after track she
would place the toe of her boot on a rail glittering in the sun, and
rising, balance an instant to catch an answer from him before going on.
There was no haste in their manner. They had crossed the railroad
yard, strangers; they recrossed it quite other. Their steps they
retraced, but not their path. The path that led them that day together
to the engine was never to be retraced.
To worry Crosby's new locomotive, Blood's car had been ordered added to
the westbound limited, but neither Glover nor Blood spent any time in
the private car. The afternoon went in the Pullman with Gertrude Brock
and Doctor Lanning. At dinner Glover did the ordering because he had
earlier planned to celebrate the promotion, already known, of Morris
Blood to the general superintendency.
If there were few lines along which the construction engineer could
shine he at least appeared to advantage as the host of his friend,
since the ordering of a dinner is peculiarly a gentleman's matter, and
even the modest complement of wine which the occasion demanded, Glover
toasted in a way that revealed the boyish loyalty between the two men.
The spirit of it was so contagious that neither the doctor nor Gertrude
made scruple of adding their congratulations. But the moments were
fleeting and Glover, next day, could recall them up to one scene only.
When Gertrude found she could not, even after a brave effort, ride with
her back to the engine, and accepted so graciously Mr. Blood's offer to
change seats, it brought her beside Glover; after that his memory
failed.
In the morning he felt miserably overdone, as at Sleepy Cat a man might
after running a preliminary half way to heaven. Moreover, when they
parted he had, he remembered, undertaken to dine the following evening
at the Springs.
When he entered the apartments of the Pittsburg party at six o'clock,
Mrs. Whitney reproached him for his absence during their month at Glen
Tarn, and in Mrs. Whitney's manner, peremptorily.
"I'm sure we've missed seeing everything worth while about here," she
complained. Her annoyance put Glover in good humor. Marie met him
with a gentler reproach. "And we go next week!"
"But you've seen everything, I know," he protested, answering both of
them.
"Whether we have or not, Mr. Glover should be penalized for his
indifference," suggested Marie. Doctor Lanning came in. "Compel him
to show us something we haven't seen around the lake," suggested the
doctor. "That he cannot do; then we have only to decide on his
punishment."
"Oh, yes, I want to be on that jury," said Gertrude, entering softly in
black.
"But is this Pittsburg justice?" objected Glover, rising at the spell
of her eyes to the raillery. "Shouldn't I have a try at the scenery
end of the proposition before sentence is demanded?"
"Justify quickly, then," threatened Marie, as they started for the
dining-room; "we are not trifling."
"Of course you've been here a month," began Glover, when the party were
seated.
"Yes."
"Out every day."
"Yes."
"The guides have all your money?"
"Yes."
"Then I stake everything on a single throw----"
"A professional," interjected Doctor Lanning.
"Only desperate gamesters stake all on a single throw," said Gertrude
warningly.
"I am a desperate gamester," said Glover, "and now for it. Have you
seen the Devil's Gap?"
A chorus of derision answered.
"The very first day--the very first trip!" cried Mrs. Whitney, raising
her tone one note above every other protest.
"And you staked all on so wretched a chance?" exclaimed Gertrude.
"Why, Devil's Gap is the stock feature of every guide, good, bad, and
indifferent, at the Springs."
"I have staked more at heavier odds," returned Glover, taking the storm
calmly, "and won. Have you made but one trip, when you first came, do
you say?"
"The very first day."
"Then you haven't seen Devil's Gap. To see it," he continued, "you
must see it at night."
"At night?"
"With the moon rising over the Spanish Sinks."
"Ah, how that sounds!" exclaimed Marie.
"To-night we have full moon," added Glover. "Don't say too lightly you
have seen Devil's Gap, for that is given to but few tourists."
"Do not call us tourists," objected Gertrude.
"And from where did you see Devil's Gap--The Pilot?"
"No, from across the Tarn."
If the expression of Glover's face, returning somewhat the ridicule
heaped on him, was intended to pique the interest of the sightseers it
was effective. He was restored, provisionally, to favor; his
suggestion that after dinner they take horses for the ride up Pilot
Mountain to where the Gap could be seen by moonlight was eagerly
adopted, and Mrs. Whitney's objection to dressing again was put down.
Marie, fearing the hardship, demurred, but Glover woke to so lively
interest, and promised the trip should be so easy that when she
consented to go he made it his affair to attend directly to her comfort
and safety.
He summoned one particular liveryman, not a favorite at the fashionable
hotel, and to him gave especial injunctions about the horses. The
girths Glover himself went over at starting, and in the riding he kept
near Marie.
Lighted by the stars, they left the hotel in the early evening. "How
are you to find your way, Mr. Glover?" asked Marie, as they threaded
the path He led her into after they had reached the mountain. "Is this
the road we came on?"
"I could climb Pilot blindfolded, I reckon. When we came in here I ran
surveys all around the old fellow, switchbacks and everything. The
line is a Chinese puzzle about here for ten miles. The path you're on
now is an old Indian trail out of Devil's Gap. The guides don't use it
because it is too long. The Gap is a ten-dollar trip, in any case, and
naturally they make it the shortest way."
For thirty minutes they rode in darkness, then leaving a sharp defile
they emerged on a plateau.
Across the Sinks the moon was rising full and into a clear sky. To the
right twinkled the lights of Glen Tarn, and below them yawned the
unspeakable wrench in the granite shoulders of the Pilot range called
Devil's Gap. Out of its appalling darkness projected miles of silvered
spurs tipped like grinning teeth by the light of the moon.
"There are a good many Devil's Gaps in the Rockies," said Glover, after
the silence had been broken; "but, I imagine, if the devil condescends
to acknowledge any he wouldn't disclaim this."
Gertrude stood beside her sister. "You are quite right," she admitted.
"We have spent our month here and missed the only overpowering
spectacle. This is Dante."
"Indeed it is," he assented, eagerly. "I must tell you. The first
time I got into the Gap with a locating party I had a volume of Dante
in my pack. It is an unfortunate trait of mine that in reading I am
compelled to chart the topography of a story as I go along. In the
'Inferno' I could never get head or tail of the topography. One night
we camped on this very ledge. In the night the horses roused me. When
I opened the tent fly the moon was up, about where it is now. I stood
till I nearly froze, looking--but I thought after that I could chart
the 'Inferno.' If it weren't so dry, or if we were going to stay all
night, I should have a camp-fire; but it wouldn't do, and before you
get cold we must start back.
"See," he pointed, far down on the left. "Can you make out that speck
of light? It is the headlight of a freight train crawling up the range
from Sleepy Cat. When the weather is right you can see the white head
of Sleepy Cat Mountain from this spot. That train will wind around in
sight of this knob for an hour, climbing to the mining camps."
Doctor Lanning called to Marie. Gertrude stood with Glover.
"Is that the desert of the Spanish Sinks?" she asked, looking into the
stream of the moon.
"Yes."
"Is that where you were lost two days?"
"My horse got away. Have you hurt your hand?"
She was holding her right hand in her left. "I tore my glove on a
thorn, coming up. It is not much."
"Is it bleeding?"
"I don't know; can you see?"
She drew down the glove gauntlet and held her hand up. If his breath
caught he did not betray it, but while he touched her she could very
plainly feel his hand tremble; yet for that matter his hand, she knew,
trembled frequently. He struck a match. It was no part of her
audacity to betray herself, and she stepped directly between the others
and the little blaze and looked into his face while he Inspected her
wrist. "Can you see?"
"It is scratched badly, but not bleeding," he answered.
"It hurts."
"Very likely; the wounds that hurt most don't always bleed," he said,
evenly. "Let us go."
"Oh, no," she said; "not quite yet. This is unutterable. I love this."
"Your aunt, I fear, is not interested. She is complaining of the cold.
I can't light a fire; the mountain is all timber below----"
"Aunt Jane would complain in heaven, but that wouldn't signify she
didn't appreciate it. Why are you so quickly put out? It isn't like
you to be out of humor." She drew on her glove slowly. "I wish you
had this wrist----"
"I wish to God I had." The sudden words frightened her. She showed
her displeasure in half turning away, then she resolutely faced him.
"I am not going to quarrel with you even if you make fun of me----"
"Fun of you?"
"Even if you put an unfair sense on what I say."
"I meant what I said in every sense, either to take the pain or--the
other. I couldn't make fun of you. Do you never make fun of me, Miss
Brock?"
"No, Mr. Glover, I do not. If you would be sensible we should do very
well. You have been so kind, and we are to leave the mountains so
soon, we ought to be good friends."
"Will you tell me one thing, Miss Brock--are you engaged?"
"I don't think you should ask, Mr. Glover. But I am not
engaged--unless that in a sense I am," she added, doubtfully.
"What sense, please?"
"That I have given no answer. Are you still complaining of the cold,
Aunt Jane?" she cried, in desperation, turning toward Mrs. Whitney. "I
find it quite warm over here. Mr. Glover and I are still watching the
freight train. Come over, do."
Going back, Glover rode near to Gertrude, who had grown restless and
imperious. To hunt this queer mountain-lion was recreation, but to
have the mountain-lion hunt her was disquieting.
She complained again of her wounded hand, but refused all suggestions,
and gave him no credit for riding between her and the thorny trees
through the cañon. It was midnight when the party reached the hotel,
and when Gertrude stepped across the parlor to the water-pitcher,
Glover followed. "I must thank you for your thoughtfulness of my
little sister to-night," she was saying.
He was so intent that he forgot to reply.
"May I ask one question?" he said.
"That depends."
"When you make answer may I know what it is?"
"Indeed you may not."