NIGHT
Glover looked at his watch; it was Giddings' trick at Medicine Bend,
and he made little doubt of getting what he asked for. He walked to
the eating-house and from there directly across to the roundhouse, and
started a hurry call for the night foreman. He found him at a desk
talking with Paddy McGraw, the engineer that was to have taken out
Number Six.
"Paddy," said Glover, "do you want to take me to Medicine to-night?"
"They've just cancelled Number Six."
"I know it."
"You don't have to go to-night, do you?"
"Yes, with Mr. Brock's car. This isn't as bad as the night you and I
and Jack Moore bucked snow at Point of Rocks," said Glover,
significantly. "Do you remember carrying me from the number seven
culvert clean back to the station after the steampipe broke?"
"You bet I do, and I never thought you'd see again after the way your
eyes were cooked that night. Well, of course, if you want to go
to-night, it's go, Mr. Glover. You know what you're about, but I'd
never look to see you going out for fun a night like this."
"I can't help it. Yet I wouldn't want any man to go out with me
to-night unwillingly, Paddy."
"Why, that's nothing. You got me my first run on this division. I'd
pull you to hell if you said so."
Glover turned to the night foreman. "What's the best engine in the
house?"
"There's the 1018 with steam and a plough."
Glover started. "The 1018?"
"She was to pull Six." The mountain man picked up the telephone, and
getting the operators, sent a rush message to Giddings. Leaving final
instructions with the two men he returned to the telegraph office.
When Giddings's protest about ordering a train out on such a night
came, Glover, who expected it, choked it back--assuming all
responsibility--gave no explanations and waited. When the orders came
he inspected them himself and returned to the car. Gertrude, in the
car alone, was drinking coffee from a hotel tray on the card table.
"It was very kind of you to send this in," she said, rising cordially.
"I had forgotten all about dinner. Have you succeeded?"
"Yes. Could you eat what they sent?"
"Pray look. I have left absolutely nothing and I am very grateful. Do
I not seem so?" she added, searchingly. "I want to because I am."
He smiled at her earnestness. Two little chairs were drawn up at the
table, and facing each other they sat down while Gertrude finished her
coffee and made Glover take a sandwich.
When the train conductor came in ten minutes later Glover talked with
him. While the men spoke Gertrude noticed how Glover overran the
dainty chair she had provided. She scrutinized his rough-weather garb,
the heavy hunting boots, the stout reefer buttoned high, and the
leather cap crushed now with his gloves in his hand. She had been
asking him where he got the cap, and a moment before, while her
attention wandered, he had told her the story of a company of Russian
noblemen and engineers from Vladivostok, who, during the summer, had
been his guests, nominally on a bear hunt, though they knew better than
to hunt bears in summer. It was really to pick up points on American
railroad construction. He might go, he thought, the following spring
to Siberia himself, perhaps to stay--this man that feared the wind--he
had had a good offer. The cap was a present.
The two men went out and she was left alone. A flagman, hat in hand,
passed through the car. The shock of the engine coupler striking the
buffer hardly disturbed her reverie; for her the night meant too much.
Glover was with the operators giving final instructions to Giddings for
ploughs to meet them without fail at Point of Rocks. Hastening from
the office he looked again at the barometer. It promised badly and the
thermometer stood at ten degrees above zero.
He had made his way through the falling snow to where they were
coupling the engine to the car, watched narrowly, and going forward
spoke to the engineer. When he re-entered the car it was moving slowly
out of the yard.
Gertrude, with a smile, put aside her book. "I am so glad," she said,
looking at her watch. "I hope we shall get there by eleven o'clock; we
should, should we not, Mr. Glover?"
"It's a poor night for making a schedule," was all he said. The arcs
of the long yard threw white and swiftly passing beams of light through
the windows, and the warmth within belied the menace outside.
At the rear end of the car the flagman worked with one of the
tail-lights that burned badly, and the conductor watched him. Gertrude
laid aside her furs and threw open her jacket. Her hat she kept on,
and sitting in a deep chair told Glover of her father's arrival from
the East on Wednesday and explained how she had set her heart on
surprising him that evening at Medicine Bend. "Where are we now?" she
asked, as the rumble of the whirling trucks deepened.
"Entering Sleepy Cat Cañon, the Rat River----"
"Oh, I remember this. I ride on the platform almost every time I come
through here so I may see where you split the mountain. And every time
I see it I ask myself the same question. How came he ever to think of
that?"
It needed even hardly so much of an effort to lull her companion's
uneasiness. He was a man with no concern at best for danger, except as
to the business view of it, and when personally concerned in the hazard
his scruples were never deep. Not before had he seen or known Gertrude
Brock, for from that moment she gave herself to bewilderment and charm.
The great engine pulling them made so little of its load that they
could afford to forget the night; indeed, Gertrude gave him no moments
to reflect. From the quick play of their talk at the table she led him
to the piano. When, sitting down, she drew off her gloves. She drew
them off lazily. When he reminded her that she still had on her jacket
she did not look up, but leaning forward she studied the page of a song
on the rack, running the air with her right hand, while she slowly
extended her left arm toward him and let him draw the tight sleeve over
her wrist and from her shoulder. Then his attempt to relieve her of
the second sleeve she wholly ignored, slipping it lightly off and
pursuing the song with her left hand while she let the jacket fall in a
heap on the floor. By the time Glover had picked it up and she had
frowned at him she might safely have asked him, had the fancy struck
her, to head the engine for the peak of Sleepy Cat Mountain.
Half-way through a teasing Polish dance she stopped and asked suddenly
whether he had had any supper besides the sandwich; and refusing to
receive assurances forthwith abandoned the piano, rummaged the
staterooms and came back bearing in one hand a very large box of candy
and in the other a banjo. She wanted to hear the darky tunes he had
strummed at the desert campfire, and making him eat of the chocolates,
picked meantime at the banjo herself.
He was so hungry that unconsciously he despatched one entire layer of
the box while she talked. She laughed heartily at his appetite, and at
his solicitation began tasting the sweetmeats herself. She led him to
ask where the box had come from and refused to answer more than to
wonder, as she discarded the tongs and proffered him a bonbon from her
fingers, whether possibly she was not having more pleasure in disposing
of the contents than the donor of the box had intended. Changing the
subject capriciously she recalled the night in the car that he had
assisted in Louise Bonner's charade, and his absurdly effective
pirouetting in a corner behind the curtain where Louise and he thought
no one saw them.
"And, by the way," she added, "you never told me whether your
stenographer finally came that day you tried to put me at work."
Glover hung his head.
"Did she?"
"Yes."
"What is she like?"
He laughed and was about to reply when the train conductor coming
forward touched him on the shoulder and spoke. Gertrude could not hear
what he said, but Glover turned his head and straightened in his chair.
"I can't smell anything," he said, presently. With the conductor he
walked to the hind end of the car, opened the door, and the three men
went out on the platform.
"What is it?" asked Gertrude, when Glover came back.
"One of the journals in the rear truck is heating. It is curious," he
mused; "as many times as I've ridden in this car I've never known a box
to run hot till to-night--just when we don't want it to."
He drew down the slack of the bell cord, pulled it twice firmly and
listened. Two freezing pipes from the engine answered; they sounded
cold. A stop was made and Glover, followed by the trainmen, went
outside. Gertrude walking back saw them in the driving snow beneath
the window. Their lamps burned bluishly dim. From the journal box
rose a whipping column of black smoke expanding, when water was got on
the hot steel, into a blinding explosion of white vapor that the storm
snatched away in rolling clouds. There was running to and from the
engine and the delay was considerable, but they succeeded at last in
rigging a small tank above the wheel so that a stream of water should
run into the box.
The men re-entered with their faces stung by the cold, the engine
hoarsely signalled and the car started. Glover made little of the
incident, but Gertrude observed some preoccupation in his manner. He
consulted frequently his watch. Once when he was putting it back she
asked to see it. His watch was the only thing of real value he had and
he was pleased to show it. It contained a portrait of his mother, and
Gertrude, to her surprise and delight, found it. She made him answer
question after question, asked him to let her take the watch from the
chain and studied the girlish face of this man's mother until she
noticed its outlines growing dim and looked impatiently up at the deck
burner: the gas was freezing in the storage tanks.
Glover walked to the rear; the journal they told him was running hot
again. The engineer had asked not to be stopped till they reached Soda
Buttes, where he should have to take water. When he finally slowed for
the station the box was ablaze.
The men hastening out found their drip-tank full of ice: there was
nothing for it but fresh brasses, and Glover getting down in the snow
set the jack with his own hands so it should be set right. The
conductor passed him a bar, but Gertrude could not see; she could only
hear the ring of the frosty steel. Then with a scream the safety valve
of the engine popped and the wind tossed the deafening roar in and out
of the car, now half dark. Stunned by the uproar and disturbed by the
failing light she left her chair, and going over sat down at the window
beneath which Glover was working; some instinct made her seek him.
When the car door opened, the flagman entered with both hands filled
with snow.
"Are you ready to start?" asked Gertrude. He shook his head and
bending over a leather chair rubbed the snow vigorously between his
fingers.
"Oh, are you hurt?"
"I froze my fingers and Mr. Glover ordered me in," said the boy.
Gertrude noticed for the first time the wind and listened; standing
still the car caught the full sweep and it rang in her ears softly, a
far, lonely sound.
While she listened the lights of the car died wholly out, but the
jargon of noises from the truck kept away some of the loneliness. She
knew he would soon come and when the sounds ceased she waited for him
at the door and opened it hastily for him. He looked storm-beaten as
he held his lantern up with a laugh. Then he examined the flagman's
hand, followed Gertrude forward and placed the lantern on the table
between them, his face glowing above the hooded light. They were
running again, very fast, and the rapid whipping of the trucks was
resonant with snow.
"How far now to Medicine?" she smiled.
"We are about half-way. From here to Point of Rocks we follow an
Indian trail."
The car was no longer warm. The darkness, too, made Gertrude restless
and they searched the storage closets vainly for candles. When they
sat down again they could hear the panting of the engine. The exhaust
had the thinness of extreme cold. They were winding on heavy grades
among the Buttes of the Castle Creek country, and when the engineer
whistled for Castle station the big chime of the engine had shrunk to a
baby's treble; it was growing very cold.
As the car slowed, Glover caught an odor of heated oil, and going back
found the coddled journal smoking again, and like an honest man cursed
it heartily, then he went forward to find out what the stop was for.
He came back after some moments. Gertrude was waiting at the door for
him. "What did you learn?"
He held his lantern up to light her face and answered her question with
another.
"Do you think you could stand a ride in the engine cab?"
"Surely, if necessary. Why?"
"The engine isn't steaming overly well. When we leave this point we
get the full wind across the Sweetgrass plains. There's no fit place
at this station for you--no place, in fact--or I should strongly advise
staying here. But if you stayed in the car there's no certainty we
could heat it another hour. If we sidetrack the car here with the
conductor and flagman they can stay with the operator and you and I can
take the cab into Medicine Bend."
"Whatever you think best."
"I hate to suggest it."
"It is my fault. Shall we go now?"
"As soon as we sidetrack the car. Meantime"--he spoke
earnestly--"remember it may mean life--bundle yourself up in everything
warm you can find."
"But you?"
"I am used to it."