"Times has suttainly changed for the wuss if this is a bridal couple, gimme divorcees."
And the next morning they were in Wyoming—well toward the center of that State. They had left behind the tame levels and the truly rural towns and they were among foothills and mountains, passing cities of wildly picturesque repute, like Cheyenne, and Laramie, Bowie, and Medicine Bow, and Bitter Creek, whose very names imply literature and war whoops, cow-boy yelps, barking revolvers, another redskin biting the dust, cattle stampedes, town-paintings, humorous lynchings and bronchos in epileptic frenzy.
But the talk of this train was concerned with none of these wonders, which the novelists and the magazinist have perhaps a trifle overpublished. The talk of this train was concerned with the eighth wonder of the world, a semi-detached bridal couple.
Mrs. Whitcomb was eager enough to voice the sentiment of the whole populace, when she looked up from her novel in the observation room and, nudging Mrs. Temple, drawled: "By the way, my dear, has that bridal couple made up its second night's quarrel yet?"
"The Mallorys?" Mrs. Temple flushed as she answered, mercifully. "Oh, yes, they were very friendly again this morning."
Mrs. Whitcomb's countenance was cynical: "My dear, I've been married twice and I ought to know something about honeymoons, but this honeyless honeymoon——" she cast up her eyes and her hands in despair.
The women were so concerned about Mr. and "Mrs." Mallory, that they hardly noticed the uncomfortable plight of the Wellingtons, or the curious behavior of the lady from the stateroom who seemed to be afraid of something and never spoke to anybody. The strange behavior of Anne Gattle and Ira Lathrop even escaped much comment, though they were forever being stumbled on when anybody went out to the observation platform. When they were dislodged from there, they sat playing checkers and talking very little, but making eyes at one another and sighing like furnaces.
They had evidently concocted some secret of their own, for Ira, looking at his watch, murmured sentimentally to Anne: "Only a few hours more, Annie."
And Anne turned geranium-color and dropped a handful of checkers. "I don't know how I can face it."
Ira growled like a lovesick lion: "Aw, what do you care?"
"But I was never married before, Ira," Anne protested, "and on a train, too."
"Why, all the bridal couples take to the railroads."
"I should think it would be the last place they'd go," said Anne—a sensible woman, Anne! "Look at the Mallories—how miserable they are."
"I thought they were happy," said Ira, whose great virtue it was to pay little heed to what was none of his business.
"Oh, Ira," cried Anne, "I hope we shan't begin to quarrel as soon as we are married."
"As if anybody could quarrel with you, Anne," he said.
"Do you think I'll be so monotonous as that?" she retorted.
Her spunk delighted him beyond words. He whispered: "Anne, you're so gol-darned sweet if I don't get a chance to kiss you, I'll bust."
"Why, Ira—we're on the train."
"Da—darn the train! Who ever heard of a fellow proposing and getting engaged to a girl and not even kissing her."
"But our engagement is so short."
"Well, I'm not going to marry you till I get a kiss."
Perhaps innocent old Anne really believed this blood-curdling threat. It brought her instantly toterms, though she blushed: "But everybody's always looking."
"Come out on the observation platform."
"Oh, Ira, again?"
"I dare you."
"I take you—but" seeing that Mrs. Whitcomb was trying to overhear, she whispered: "let's pretend it's the scenery."
So Ira rose, pushed the checkers aside, and said in an unusually positive tone: "Ah, Miss Gattle, won't you have a look at the landscape?"
"Oh, thank you, Mr. Lathrop," said Anne, "I just love scenery."
They wandered forth like the Sleeping Beauty and her princely awakener, and never dreamed what gigglings and nudgings and wise head-noddings went on back of them. Mrs. Wellington laughed loudest of all at the lovers whose heads had grown gray while their hearts were still so green.
It was shortly after this that the Wellingtons themselves came into prominence in the train life.
As the train approached Green River, and its copper-basined stream, the engineer began to set the air-brakes for the stop. Jimmie Wellington, boozily half-awake in the smoking room, wanted to know what the name of the station was. Everybody is always eager to oblige a drunken man, so Ashton and Fosdick tried to get a window open to look out.
The first one they labored at, they could not budge after a biceps-breaking tug. The second flew up with such ease that they went over backward. Ashton put his head out and announced that the approaching depot was labelled "Green River." Wellington burbled: "What a beautiful name for a shtation."
Ashton announced that there was something beautifuller still on the platform—"Oh, a peach!—a nectarine! and she's getting on this train."
Even Doctor Temple declared that she was a dear little thing, wasn't she?
Wellington pushed him aside, saying: "Stand back, Doc., and let me see; I have a keen sense of beau'ful."
"Be careful," cried the doctor, "he'll fall out of the window."
"Not out of that window," Ashton sagely observed, seeing the bulk of Wellington. As the train started off again, Little Jimmie distributed alcoholic smiles to the Green Riverers on the platform and called out:
"Goo'bye, ever'body. You're all abslootly—ow! ow!" He clapped his hand to his eye and crawled back into the car, groaning with pain.
"What's the matter," said Wedgewood. "Got something in your eye?"
"No, you blamed fool. I'm trying to look through my thumb."
"Poor fellow!" sympathized Doctor Temple, "it's a cinder!"
"A cinder! It's at leasht a ton of coal."
"I say, old boy, let me have a peek," said Wedgewood, screwing in his monocle and peering into the depths of Wellington's eye. "I can't see a bally thing."
"Of course not, with that blinder on," growled the miserable wretch, weeping in spite of himself and rubbing his smarting orb.
"Don't rub that eye," Ashton counselled, "rub the other eye."
"It's my eye; I'll rub it if I want to. Get me a doctor, somebody. I'm dying."
"Here's Doctor Temple," said Ashton, "right on the job." Wellington turned to the old clergyman with pathetic trust, and the deceiver writhed in his disguise. The best he could think of was: "Will somebody lend me a lead pencil?"
"What for?" said Wellington, uneasily.
"I am going to roll your upper lid up on it," said the Doctor.
"Oh, no, you're not," said the patient. "You can roll your own lids!"
Then the conductor, still another conductor, wandered on the scene and asked as if it were not a world-important matter: "What's the matter—pick up a cinder?"
"Yes. Perhaps you can get it out," the alleged doctor appealed.
The conductor nodded: "The best way is this—take hold of the winkers."
"The what?" mumbled Wellington.
"Grab the winkers of your upper eyelid in your right hand——"
"I've got 'em."
"Now grab the winkers of your lower eyelid in your left hand. Now raise the right hand, push the under lid under the overlid and haul the overlid over the underlid; when you have the overlid well over the under——"
Wellington waved him away: "Say, what do you think I'm trying to do? stuff a mattress? Get out of my way. I want my wife—lead me to my wife."
"An excellent idea," said Dr. Temple, who had been praying for a reconciliation.
He guided Wellington with difficulty to the observation room and, finding Mrs. Wellington at the desk as usual, he began: "Oh, Mrs. Wellington, may I introduce you to your husband?"
Mrs. Wellington rose haughtily, caught a sight of her suffering consort and ran to him with a cry of "Jimmie!"
"Lucretia!"
"What's happened—are you killed?"
"I'm far from well. But don't worry. My life insurance is paid up."
"Oh, my poor little darling," Mrs. Jimmie fluttered, "What on earth ails you?" She turned to the doctor. "Is he going to die?"
"I think not," said the doctor. "It's only a bad case of cinder-in-the-eyetis."
Thus reassured, Mrs. Wellington went into the patient's eye with her handkerchief. "Is that the eye?" she asked.
"No!" he howled, "the other one."
She went into that and came out with the cinder.
"There! It's just a tiny speck."
Wellington regarded the mote with amazement. "Is that all? It felt as if I had Pike's Peak in my eye." Then he waxed tender. "Oh, Lucretia, how can I ever——"
But she drew away with a disdainful: "Give me back my hand, please."
"Now, Lucretia," he protested, "don't you think you're carrying this pretty far?"
"Only as far as Reno," she answered grimly, which stung him to retort: "You'd better take the beam out of your own eye, now that you've taken the cinder out of mine," but she, noting that they were the center of interest, observed: "All the passengers are enjoying this, my dear. You'd better go back to the café."
Wellington regarded her with a revulsion to wrath. He thundered at her: "I will go back, but allow me to inform you, my dear madam, that I'llnot drink another drop—just to surprise you."
Mrs. Wellington shrugged her shoulders at this ancient threat and Jimmie stumbled back to his lair, whither the men followed him. Feeling sympathy in the atmosphere, Little Jimmie felt impelled to pour out his grief:
"Jellmen, I'm a brok'n-heartless man. Mrs. Well'n'ton is a queen among women, but she has temper of tarant——"
Wedgewood broke in: "I say, old boy, you've carried this ballast for three days now, wherever did you get it?"
Wellington drew himself up proudly for a moment before he slumped back into himself. "Well, you see, when I announced to a few friends that I was about to leave Mrs. Well'n'ton forever and that I was going out to—to—you know."
"Reno. We know. Well?"
"Well, a crowd of my friends got up a farewell sort of divorce breakfast—and some of 'em felt so very sad about my divorce that they drank a little too much, and the rest of my friends felt so very glad about my divorce, that they drank a little too much. And, of course, I had to join both parties."
"And that breakfast," said Ashton, "lasted till the train started, eh?"
Wellington glowered back triumphantly. "Lasted till the train started? Jellmen, that breakfast is going yet!"
Wellington's divorce breakfast reminded Ashton of a story. Ashton was one of the great That-Reminds-Me family. Perhaps it was to the credit of the Englishman that he missed the point of this story, even though Jimmie Wellington saw it through his fog, and Dr. Temple turned red and buried his eyes in the eminently respectable pages of theScientific American.
Ashton and Wellington and Fosdick exchanged winks over the Britisher's stare of incomprehension, and Ashton explained it to him again in words of one syllable, with signboards at all the difficult spots.
Finally a gleam of understanding broke over Wedgewood's face and he tried to justify his delay.
"Oh, yes, of cawse I see it now. Yes, I rather fancy I get you. It's awfully good, isn't it? I think I should have got it before but I'm not really myself; for two mawnings I haven't had my tub."
Wellington shook with laughter: "If you're like this now, what will you be when you get to Sin sanfrasco—I mean Frinsansisco—well, you know what I mean."
Ashton reached round for the electric button as if he were conferring a favor: "The drinks are on you, Wedgewood. I'll ring." And he rang.
"Awf'lly kind of you," said Wedgewood, "but how do you make that out?"
"The man that misses the point, pays for the drinks." And he rang again. Wellington protested.
"But I've jolly well paid for all the drinks for two days."
Wellington roared: "That's another point you've missed." And Ashton rang again, but the pale yellow individual who had always answered the bell with alacrity did not appear. "Where's that infernal buffet waiter?" Ashton grumbled.
Wedgewood began to titter. "We were out of Scotch, so I sent him for some more."
"When?"
"Two stations back. I fancy we must have left him behind."
"Well, why in thunder didn't you say so?" Ashton roared.
"It quite escaped my mind," Wedgewood grinned. "Rather good joke on you fellows, what?"
"Well, I don't see the point," Ashton growled, but the triumphant Englishman howled: "That's whereyoupay!"
Wedgewood had his laugh to himself, for theothers wanted to murder him. Ashton advised a lynching, but the conductor arrived on the scene in time to prevent violence.
Fosdick informed him of the irretrievable loss of the useful buffet waiter. The conductor promised to get another at Ogden.
Ashton wailed: "Have we got to sit here and die of thirst till then?"
The conductor refused to "back up for a coon," but offered to send in a sleeping-car porter as a temporary substitute.
As he started to go, Fosdick, who had been incessantly consulting his watch, checked him to ask: "Oh, conductor, when do we get to the State-line of dear old Utah?"
"Dear old Utah!" the conductor grinned. "We'd 'a' been there already if we hadn't 'a' fell behind a little."
"Just my luck to be late," Fosdick moaned.
"What you so anxious to be in Utah for, Fosdick?" Ashton asked, suspiciously. "You go on to 'Frisco, don't you?"
Fosdick was evidently confused at the direct question. He tried to dodge it: "Yes, but—funny how things have changed. When we started, nobody was speaking to anybody except his wife, now——"
"Now," said Ashton, drily, "everybody's speaking to everybody except his wife."
"You're wrong there," Little Jimmie interrupted."I wasn't speaking to my wife in the first place. We got on as strangersh and we're strangersh yet. Mrs. Well'n'ton is a——"
"A queen among women, we know! Dry up," said Ashton, and then they heard the querulous voice of the porter of their sleeping car: "I tell you, I don't know nothin' about the buffet business."
The conductor pushed him in with a gruff command: "Crawl in that cage and get busy."
Still the porter protested: "Mista Pullman engaged me for a sleepin' car, not a drinkin' car. I'm a berth-maker, not a mixer." He cast a resentful glance through the window that served also as a bar, and his whole tone changed: "Say, is you goin' to allow me loose amongst all them beautiful bottles? Say, man, if you do, I can't guarantee my conduck."
"If you even sniff one of those bottles," the conductor warned him, "I'll crack it over your head."
"That won't worry me none—as long as my mouf's open." He smacked his chops over the prospect of intimacy with that liquid treasury. "Lordy! Well, I'll try to control my emotions—but remember, I don't guarantee nothin'."
The conductor started to go, but paused for final instructions: "And remember—after we get to Utah you can't serve any hard liquor at all."
"What's that? Don't they 'low nothin' in that old Utah but ice-cream soda?"
"That's about all. If you touch a drop, I'll leave you in Utah for life."
"Oh, Lordy, I'll be good!"
The conductor left the excited black and went his way. Ashton was the first to speak: "Say, Porter, can you mix drinks?"
The porter ruminated, then confessed: "Well, not on the outside, no, sir. If you-all is thirsty you better order the simplest things you can think of. If you was to command anything fancy, Lord knows what you'd get. Supposin' you was to say, 'Gimme a Tom Collins.' I'd be just as liable as not to pass you a Jack Johnson."
"Well, can you open beer?"
"Oh, I'm a natural born beer-opener."
"Rush it out then. My throat is as full of alkali dust as these windows."
The porter soon appeared with a tray full of cotton-topped glasses. The day was hot and the alkali dust very oppressive, and the beer was cold. Dr. Temple looked on it when it was amber, and suffered himself to be bullied into taking a glass.
He felt that he was the greatest sinner on earth, but worst of all was the fact that when he had fallen, the forbidden brew was not sweet. He was inexperienced enough to sip it and it was like foaming quinine on his palate. But he kept at it from sheer shame, and his luxurious transgression was its own punishment.
The doleful Mallory was on his way to join the "club". Crossing the vestibule he had met the conductor, and had ventured to quiz him along the old lines:
"Excuse me, haven't you taken any clergymen on board this train yet?"
"Devil a one."
"Don't you ever carry any preachers on this road?"
"Usually we get one or two. Last trip we carried a whole Methodist convention."
"A whole convention last trip! Just my luck!"
The unenlightened conductor turned to call back: "Say, up in the forward car we got a couple of undertakers. They be of any use to you?"
"Not yet."
Then Mallory dawdled on into the smoking room, where he found his own porter, who explained that he had been "promoted to the bottlery."
"Do we come to a station stop soon?" Mallory asked.
"Well, not for a considerable interval. Do you want to get out and walk up and down?"
"I don't," said Mallory, taking from under his coat Snoozleums, whom he had smuggled past the new conductor. "Meanwhile, Porter, could you give him something to eat to distract him?"
The porter grinned, and picking up a bill of fare held it out. "I got a meenuel. It ain't written indog, but you can explain it to him. What would yo' canine desiah, sah?"
Snoozleums put out a paw and Mallory read what it indicated: "He says he'd like a filet Chateaubriand, but if you have any old bones, he'll take those." The porter gathered Snoozleums in and disappeared with him into the buffet, Mallory calling after him: "Don't let the conductor see him."
Dr. Temple advanced on the disconsolate youth with an effort at cheer: "How is our bridegroom this beautiful afternoon?"
Mallory glanced at his costume: "I feel like a rainbow gone wrong. Just my luck to have to borrow from everybody. Look at me! This collar of Mr. Wellington's makes me feel like a peanut in a rubber tire." He turned to Fosdick.
"I say, Mr. Fosdick, what size collar do you wear?"
"Fourteen and a half," said Fosdick.
"Fourteen and a half!—why don't you get a neck? You haven't got a plain white shirt, have you? Our English friend lent me this, but it's purple, and Mr. Ashton's socks are maroon, and this peacock blue tie is very unhappy."
"I think I can fit you out," said Fosdick.
"And if you had an extra pair of socks," Mallory pleaded,—"just one pair of unemotional socks."
"I'll show you my repertoire."
"All right, I'll see you later." Then he went upto Wellington, with much hesitance of manner. "By the way, Mr. Wellington, do you suppose Mrs. Wellington could lend Miss—Mrs.—could lend Marjorie some—some——"
Wellington waved him aside with magnificent scorn: "I am no longer in Mrs. Wellington's confidence."
"Oh, excuse me," said Mallory. He had noted that the Wellingtons occupied separate compartments, but for all he knew their reason was as romantic as his own.
Mrs. Jimmie Wellington, who had traveled much abroad and learned in England the habit of smoking in the corridors of expensive hotels, had acquired also the habit, as travelers do, of calling England freer than America. She determined to do her share toward the education of her native country, and chose, for her topic, tobacco as a feminine accomplishment.
She had grown indifferent to stares and audible comment and she could fight a protesting head waiter to a standstill. If monuments and tablets are ever erected to the first woman who smoked publicly in this place or that, Mrs. Jimmie Wellington will be variously remembered and occupy a large place in historical record.
The narrow confines of the women's room on the sleeping car soon palled on her, and she objected to smoking there except when she felt the added luxury of keeping some other woman outside—fuming, but not smoking. And now Mrs. Jimmie had staked out a claim on the observation platform. She sat there,puffing like a major-general, and in one portion of Nebraska two farmers fell off their agricultural vehicles at the sight of her cigar-smoke trailing after the train. In Wyoming three cowboys followed her for a mile, yipping and howling their compliments.
Feeling the smoke mood coming on, Mrs. Wellington invited Mrs. Temple to smoke with her, but Mrs. Temple felt a reminiscent qualm at the very thought, so Mrs. Jimmie sauntered out alone, to the great surprise of Ira Lathrop, whose motto was, "Two heads are better than one," and who was apparently willing to wait till Anne Gattle's head grew on his shoulder.
"I trust I don't intrude," Mrs. Wellington said.
"Oh, no. Oh, yes." Anne gasped in fiery confusion as she fled into the car, followed by the purple-faced Ira, who slammed the door with a growl: "That Wellington woman would break up anything."
The prim little missionary toppled into the nearest chair: "Oh, Ira, what will she think?"
"She can't think!" Ira grumbled. "In a little while she'll know."
"Don't you think we'd better tell everybody before they begin to talk?"
Ira glowed with pride at the thought and murmured with all the ardor of a senile Romeo: "I suppose so, ducky darling. I'll break it—I mean I'll tell it to the men, and you tell the women."
"All right, dear, I'll obey you," she answered, meekly.
"Obey me!" Ira laughed with boyish swagger. "And you a missionary!"
"Well, I've converted one heathen, anyway," said Anne as she darted down the corridor, followed by Ira, who announced his intention to "go to the baggage car and dig up his old Prince Albert."
In their flight forward they passed the mysterious woman in the stateroom. They were too full of their own mystery to give thought to hers. Mrs. Fosdick went timidly prowling toward the observation car, suspecting everybody to be a spy, as Mallory suspected everybody to be a clergyman in disguise.
As she stole along the corridor past the men's clubroom she saw her husband—her here-and-there husband—wearily counting the telegraph posts and summing them up into miles. She tapped on the glass and signalled to him, then passed on.
He answered with a look, then pretended not to have noticed, and waited a few moments before he rose with an elaborate air of carelessness. He beckoned the porter and said:
"Let me know the moment we enter Utah, will you?"
"Yassah. We'll be comin' along right soon now. We got to pass through the big Aspen tunnel, after that, befo' long, we splounce into old Utah."
"Don't forget," said Fosdick, as he sauntered out. Ashton perked up his ears at the promise of a tunnel and kept his eye on his watch.
Fosdick entered the observation room with a hungry look in his luscious eyes. His now-and-then wife put up a warning finger to indicate Mrs. Whitcomb's presence at the writing desk.
Fosdick's smile froze into a smirk of formality and he tried to chill his tone as if he were speaking to a total stranger.
"Good afternoon."
Mrs. Fosdick answered with equal ice: "Good afternoon. Won't you sit down?"
"Thanks. Very picturesque scenery, isn't it?"
"Isn't it?" Fosdick seated himself, looked about cautiously, noted that Mrs. Whitcomb was apparently absorbed in her letter, then lowered his voice confidentially. His face kept up a strained pretense of indifference, but his whisper was passionate with longing:
"Has my poor little wifey missed her poor old hubby?"
"Oh, so much!" she whispered. "Has poor little hubby missed his poor old wife?"
"Horribly. Was she lonesome in that dismal stateroom all by herself?"
"Oh, so miserable! I can't stand it much longer."
Fosdick's face blazed with good news: "In justa little while we come to the Utah line—then we're safe."
"God bless Utah!"
The rapture died from her face as she caught sight of Dr. Temple, who happened to stroll in and go to the bookshelves, and taking out a book happened to glance near-sightedly her way.
"Be careful of that man, dearie," Mrs. Fosdick hissed out of one side of her mouth. "He's a very strange character."
Her husband was infected with her own terror. He asked, huskily: "What do you think he is?"
"A detective! I'm sure he's watching us. He followed you right in here."
"We'll be very cautious—till we get to Utah."
The old clergyman, a little fuzzy in brain from his début in beer, continued innocently to confirm the appearance of a detective by drifting aimlessly about. He was looking for his wife, but he kept glancing at the uneasy Fosdicks. He went to the door, opened it, saw Mrs. Wellington finishing a cigar, and retreated precipitately. Seeing Mrs. Temple wandering in the corridor, he motioned her to a chair near the Fosdicks and she sat by his side, wondering at his filmy eyes.
The Fosdicks, glancing uncomfortably at Dr. Temple, rose and selected other chairs further away. Then Roger Ashton sauntered in, his eyes searching for a proper companion through the tunnel.
He saw Mrs. Wellington returning from the platform, just tossing away her cigar and blowing out the last of its grateful vapor.
With an effort at sarcasm, he went to her and offered her one of his own cigars, smiling: "Have another."
She took it, looked it over, and parried his irony with a formula she had heard men use when they hate to refuse a gift-cigar: "Thanks. I'll smoke it after dinner, if you don't mind."
"Oh, I don't mind," he laughed, then bending closer he murmured: "They tell me we are coming to a tunnel, a nice, long, dark, dismal tunnel."
Mrs. Wellington would not take a dare. She felt herself already emancipated from Jimmie. So she answered Ashton's hint with a laughing challenge:
"How nice of the conductor to arrange it."
Ashton smacked his lips over the prospect.
And now the porter, having noted Ashton's impatience to reach the tunnel, thought to curry favor and a quarter by announcing its approach. He bustled in and made straight for Ashton just as the tunnel announced itself with a sudden swoop of gloom, a great increase of the train-noises and a far-off clang of the locomotive bell.
Out of the Egyptian darkness came the unmistakable sounds of osculation in various parts of the room. Doubtless, it was repeated in other parts of the train. There were numerous cooing sounds, too,but nobody spoke except Mrs. Temple, who was heard to murmur:
"Oh, Walter, dear, what makes your breath so funny!"
Next came a little yowl of pain in Mrs. Fosdick's voice, and then daylight flooded the car with a rush, as if time had made an instant leap from midnight to noon. There were interesting disclosures.
Mrs. Temple was caught with her arms round the doctor's neck, and she blushed like a spoony girl. Mrs. Fosdick was trying to disengage her hair from Mr. Fosdick's scarf-pin. Mrs. Whitcomb alone was deserted. Mr. Ashton was gazing devotion at Mrs. Wellington and trying to tell her with his eyes how velvet he had found her cheek.
But she was looking reproachfully at him from a chair, and saying, not without regret:
"I heard everybody kissing everybody, but I was cruelly neglected."
Ashton's eyes widened with unbelief, he heard a snicker at his elbow, and whirled to find the porter rubbing his black velvet cheek and writhing with pent-up laughter.
Mrs. Wellington glanced the same way, and a shriek of understanding burst from her. It sent the porter into a spasm of yah-yahs till he caught Ashton's eyes and saw murder in them. The porter fled to the platform and held the door fast, expecting to be lynched.
But Ashton dashed away in search of concealment and soap.
The porter remained on the platform for some time, planning to leap overboard and take his chances rather than fall into Ashton's hands, but at length, finding himself unpursued, he peered into the car and, seeing that Ashton had gone, he returned to his duties. He kept a close watch on Ashton, but on soberer thoughts Ashton had decided that the incident would best be consigned to silence and oblivion. But for all the rest of that day he kept rubbing his lips with his handkerchief.
The porter, noting that the train had swept into a granite gorge like an enormously magnified aisle in a made-up sleeping car, recognized the presence of Echo Canyon, and with it the entrance into Utah. He hastened to impart the tidings to Mr. Fosdick and held out his hand as he extended the information.
Fosdick could hardly believe that his twelve-hundred-mile exile was over.
"We're in Utah?" he exclaimed.
"Yassah," and the porter shoved his palm into view. Fosdick filled it with all his loose change, then whirled to his wife and cried:
"Edith! We are in Utah now! Embrace me!"
She flung herself into his arms with a gurgle of bliss. The other passengers gasped with amazement. This sort of thing was permissible enoughin a tunnel, but in the full light of day——!
Fosdick, noting the sensation he had created, waved his hand reassuringly and called across his wife's shoulder:
"Don't be alarmed, ladies and gentlemen. She's my wife!" He added in a whisper meant for her ear alone: "At least till we get to Nevada!"
Then she whispered something in his ear and they hurried from the car. They left behind them a bewilderment that eclipsed the wonder of the Mallories. That couple spoke to each other at least during the day time. Here was a married pair that did not speak at all for two days and two nights and then made a sudden and public rush to each other's arms!
Dr. Temple summed up the general feeling when he said:
"I don't believe in witches, but if I did, I'd believe that this train is bewitched."
Later he decided that Fosdick was a Mormon elder and that Mrs. Fosdick was probably a twelfth or thirteenth spouse he was smuggling in from the East. The theory was not entirely false, for Fosdick was one of the many victims of the crazy-quilt of American divorce codes, though he was the most unwilling of polygamists. And Dr. Temple gave up his theory in despair the next morning when he found the Fosdicks still on the train, and once more keeping aloof from each other.
Mallory was dragging out a miserable existence with a companion who was neither maid, wife, nor widow and to whom he was neither bachelor, husband, nor relict.
They were suffering brain-fag from their one topic of conversation, and heart-fag from rapture deferred. Marjorie had pretended to take a nap and Mallory had pretended that he would leave her for her own sake. Their contradictory chains were beginning to gall.
Mallory sat in the smoking room, and threw aside a half-finished cigar. Life was indeed nauseous when tobacco turned rank on his lips. He watched without interest the stupendous scenery whirling past the train; granite ravines, infernal grotesques of architecture and diablerie, the Giant's Teapot, the Devil's Slide, the Pulpit Rock, the Hanging Rock, splashes of mineral color, as if titanic paint pots had been spilled or flung against the cliffs, sudden hushes of green pine-worlds, dreary graveyards of sand and sagebrush, mountain streams in frothing panics.
His jaded soul could not respond to any of these thrillers, the dime-novels and melodramatic third-acts of Nature. But with the arrival of a train-boy, who had got on at Evanston with a batch of Salt Lake City newspapers, he woke a little.
The other men came trooping round, like sheep at a herd-boy's whistle or chickens when a pan of grain is brought into the yard. The train "butcher" had a nasal sing-song, but his strain might have been the Pied Piper's tune emptying Hamelin of its grown-ups. The charms of flirtation, matrimonial bliss and feminine beauty were forgotten, and the males flocked to the delights of stock-market reports, political or racing or dramatic or sporting or criminal news. Even Ashton braved the eyes of his fellow men for the luxury of burying his nose in a fresh paper.
"Papers, gents? Yes? No?" the train butcher chanted. "Salt Lake papers, Ogden papers, all the latest papers, comic papers, magazines, periodicals."
"Here, boy," said Ashton, snapping his fingers, "what's the latest New York paper?"
"Last Sat'day's."
"Six days old? I read that before I left New York. Well, give me that Salt Lake paper. It has yesterday's stock market, I suppose."
"Yes, sir." He passed over the sheet and made change, without abating his monody: "Papers, gents. Yes? No? Salt Lake pa——"
"Whash latesh from Chicago?" said Wellington.
"Monday's."
"I read that before—that breakfast began," laughed Little Jimmie. "Well, give meSalt Lake Bazoo. It has basheball news, I s'pose."
"Yes, sir," the butcher answered, and his tone grew reverent as he said: "The Giants won. Mr. Mattyson was pitching. Papers, gents, all the latest papers, magazines, periodicals."
Wedgewood extended a languid hand: "What's the latest issue of theLondon Times?"
"Never heard of it."
Wedgewood almost fainted, and returned to his Baedeker of the United States.
Dr. Temple summoned the lad: "I don't suppose you have theYpsilanti Eagle?"
The butcher regarded him with pity, and sniffed: "I carry newspapers, not poultry."
"Well, give me the——" he saw a pink weekly of rather picturesque appearance, and the adventure attracted him. "I'll take this—also theOutlook." He folded the pink within the green, and entered into a new and startling world—a sort of journalistic slumming tour.
"Give me any old thing," said Mallory, and flung open an Ogden journal till he found the sporting page, where his eyes brightened. "By jove, a ten-inning game! Matthewson in the box!"
"Mattie is most intelleckshal pitcher in theworld," said Little Jimmie, and then everybody disappeared behind paper ramparts, while the butcher lingered to explain to the porter the details of the great event.
About this time, Marjorie, tired of her pretence at slumber, strolled into the observation car, glancing into the men's room, where she saw nothing but newspapers. Then Mrs. Wellington saw her, and smiled: "Come in and make yourself at home."
"Thanks," said Marjorie, bashfully, "I was looking for my—my——"
"Husband?"
"My dog."
"How is he this morning?"
"My dog?"
"Your husband."
"Oh, he's as well as could be expected."
"Where did you get that love of a waist?" Mrs. Wellington laughed.
"Mrs. Temple lent it to me. Isn't it sweet?"
"Exquisite! The latest Ypsilanti mode."
Marjorie, suffering almost more acutely from being badly frocked than from being duped in her matrimonial hopes, threw herself on Mrs. Wellington's mercy.
"I'm so unhappy in this. Couldn't you lend me or sell me something a little smarter?"
"I'd love to, my dear," said Mrs. Wellington,"but I left home on short notice myself. I shall need all my divorce trousseau in Reno. Otherwise—I—but here's your husband. You two ought to have some place to spoon. I'll leave you this whole room."
And she swept out, nodding to Mallory, who had divined Marjorie's presence, and felt the need of being near her, though he also felt the need of finishing the story of the great ball game. Husband-like, he felt that he was conferring sufficient courtesy in throwing a casual smile across the top of the paper.
Marjorie studied his motley garb, and her own, and groaned:
"We're a sweet looking pair, aren't we?"
"Mr. and Miss Fit," said Mallory, from behind the paper.
"Oh, Harry, has your love grown cold?" she pleaded.
"Marjorie, how can you think such a thing?" still from behind the paper.
"Well, Mrs. Wellington said we ought to have some place to spoon, and she went away and left us, and—there you stand—and——"
This pierced even the baseball news, and he threw his arms around her with glow of devotion.
She snuggled closer, and cooed: "Aren't we having a nice long engagement? We've traveled a million miles, and the preacher isn't in sight yet.What have you been reading—wedding announcements?"
"No—I was reading about the most wonderful exhibition. Mattie was in the box—and in perfect form."
"Mattie?" Marjorie gasped uneasily.
"Mattie!" he raved, "and in perfect form."
And now the hidden serpent of jealousy, which promised to enliven their future, lifted its head for the first time, and Mallory caught his first glimpse of an unsuspected member of their household. Marjorie demanded with an ominous chill:
"And who's Mattie? Some former sweetheart of yours?"
"My dear," laughed Mallory.
But Marjorie was up and away, with apt temper: "So Mattie was in the box, was she? What is it to you, where she sits? You dare to read about her and rave over her perfect form, while you neglect your wife—or your—oh, what am I, anyway?"
Mallory stared at her in amazement. He was beginning to learn what ignorant heathen women are concerning so many of the gods and demi-gods of mankind. Then, with a tenderness he might not always show, he threw the paper down and took her in his arms: "You poor child. Mattie is a man—a pitcher—and you're the only woman I ever loved—and you are liable to be my wife any minute."
The explanation was sufficient, and she crawledinto the shelter of his arm with little noises that served for apology, forgiveness and reconciliation. Then he made the mistake of mentioning the sickening topic of deferred hope:
"A minister's sure to get on at the next stop—or the next."
Marjorie's nerves were frayed by too much enduring, and it took only a word to set them jangling: "If you say minister to me again, I'll scream." Then she tried to control herself with a polite: "Where is the next stop?"
"Ogden."
"Where's that? On the map?"
"Well, it's in Utah."
"Utah!" she groaned. "They marry by wholesale there, and we can't even get a sample."
The train-butcher, entering the Observation Room, found only a loving couple. He took in at a glance their desire for solitude. A large part of his business was the forcing of wares on people who did not want them.
His voice and his method suggested the mosquito. Seeing Mallory and Marjorie mutually absorbed in reading each other's eyes, and evidently in need of nothing on earth less than something else to read, the train-butcher decided that his best plan of attack was to make himself a nuisance. It is a plan successfully adopted by organ-grinders, street pianists and other blackmailers under the guise of art, who have nothing so welcome to sell as their absence.
Mallory and Marjorie heard the train-boy's hum, but they tried to ignore it.
"Papers, gents and ladies? Yes? No? Paris fashions, lady?"
He shoved a large periodical between their very noses, but Marjorie threw it on the floor, with a bitter glance at her own borrowed plumage:
"Don't show me any Paris fashions!" Then she gave the boy his congé by resuming her chat with Mallory: "How long do we stop at Ogden?"
The train-boy went right on auctioning his papers and magazines, and poking them into the laps of his prey. And they went right on talking to one another and pushing his papers and magazines to the floor.
"I think I'd better get off at Ogden, and take the next train back. That's just what I'll do. Nothing, thank you!" this last to the train-boy.
"But you can't leave me like this," Mallory urged excitedly, with a side glance of "No, no!" to the train-boy.
"I can, and I must, and I will," Marjorie insisted. "I'll go pack my things now."
"But, Marjorie, listen to me."
"Will you let me alone!" This to the gadfly, but to Mallory a dejected wail: "I—I just remembered. I haven't anything to pack."
"And you'll have to give back that waist to Mrs. Temple. You can't get off at Ogden without a waist."
"I'll go anyway. I want to get home."
"Marjorie, if you talk that way—I'll throw you off the train!"
She gasped. He explained: "I wasn't talking to you; I was trying to stop this phonograph." Then he rose, and laid violent hands on the annoyer,shoved him to the corridor, seized his bundle of papers from his arm, and hurled them at his head. They fell in a shower about the train-butcher, who could only feel a certain respect for the one man who had ever treated him as he knew he deserved. He bent to pick up his scattered merchandise, and when he had gathered his stock together, put his head in, and sang out a sincere:
"Excuse me."
But Mallory did not hear him, he was excitedly trying to calm the excited girl, who, having eloped with him, was preparing now to elope back without him.
"Darling, you can't desert me now," he pleaded, "and leave me to go on alone?"
"Well, why don't you do something?" she retorted, in equal desperation. "If I were a man, and I had the girl I loved on a train, I'd get her married if I had to wreck the——" she caught her breath, paused a second in intense thought, and then, with sudden radiance, cried: "Harry, dear!"
"Yes, love!"
"I have an idea—an inspiration!"
"Yes, pet," rather dubiously from him, but with absolute exultation from her: "Let's wreck the train!"
"I don't follow you, sweetheart."
"Don't you see?" she began excitedly. "When there are train wrecks a lot of people get killed, andthings. A minister always turns up to administer the last something or other—well——"
"Well?"
"Well, stupid, don't you see? We wreck a train, a minister comes, we nab him, he marries us, and—there we are! Everything's lovely!"
He gave her one of those looks with which a man usually greets what a woman calls an inspiration. He did not honor her invention with analysis. He simply put forward an objection to it, and, man-like, chose the most hateful of all objections:
"It's a lovely idea, but the wreck would delay us for hours and hours, and I'd miss my transport——"
"Harry Mallory, if you mention that odious transport to me again, I know I'll have hydrophobia. I'm going home."
"But, darling," he pleaded, "you can't desert me now, and leave me to go on alone?" She had her answer glib:
"If you really loved me, you'd——"
"Oh, I know," he cut in. "You've said that before. But I'd be court-martialled. I'd lose my career."
"What's a career to a man who truly loves?"
"It's just as much as it is to anybody else—and more."
She could hardly controvert this gracefully, so she sank back with grim resignation. "Well, I've proposedmy plan, and you don't like it. Now, suppose you propose something."
The silence was oppressive. They sat like stoughton bottles. There the conductor found them some time later. He gave them a careless look, selected a chair at the end of the car, and began to sort his tickets, spreading them out on another chair, making notes with the pencil he took from atop his ear, and shoved back from time to time.
Ages seemed to pass, and Mallory had not even a suggestion. By this time Marjorie's temper had evaporated, and when he said: "If we could only stop at some town for half an hour," she said: "Maybe the conductor would hold the train for us."
"I hardly think he would."
"He looks like an awfully nice man. You ask him."
"Oh, what's the use?"
Marjorie was getting tired of depending on this charming young man with the very bad luck. She decided to assume command herself. She took recourse naturally to the original feminine methods: "I'll take care of him," she said, with resolution. "A woman can get a man to do almost anything if she flirts a little with him."
"Marjorie!"
"Now, don't you mind anything I do. Remember, it's all for love of you—even if I have to kiss him."
"Marjorie, I won't permit——"
"You have no right to boss me—yet. You subside." She gave him the merest touch, but he fell backward into a chair, utterly aghast at the shameless siren into which desperation had altered the timid little thing he thought he had chosen to love. He was being rapidly initiated into the complex and versatile and fearfully wonderful thing a woman really is, and he was saying to himself, "What have I married?" forgetting, for the moment, that he had not married her yet, and that therein lay the whole trouble.
Like the best of women and the worst of men, Marjorie was perfectly willing to do evil, that good might come of it. She advanced on the innocent conductor, as the lady from Sorek must have sidled up to Samson, coquetting with one arch hand and snipping the shears with the other.
The stupefied Mallory saw Marjorie in a startling imitation of herself at her sweetest; only now it was brazen mimicry, yet how like! She went forward as the shyest young thing in the world, pursed her lips into an ecstatic simper, and began on the unsuspecting official:
"Isn't the country perfectly——"
"Yes, but I'm getting used to it," the conductor growled, without looking up.
His curt indifference jolted Marjorie a trifle, but she rallied her forces, and came back with: "How long do we stop at Ogden?"
"Five minutes," very bluntly.
Marjorie poured maple syrup on her tone, as she purred: "This train of yours is an awfully fast train, isn't it?"
"Sort of," said the conductor, with just a trace of thaw. What followed made him hold his breath, for the outrageous little hussy was actually saying: "The company must have a great deal of confidence in you to entrust the lives and welfare of so many people to your presence of mind and courage."
"Well, of course, I can't say as to that——" Even Mallory could see that the man's reserve was melting fast as Marjorie went on with relentless treacle:
"Talk about soldiers and firemen and life-savers! I think it takes a braver man than any of those to be a conductor—really."
"Well, it is a kind of a responsible job." The conductor swelled his chest a little at that, and Marjorie felt that he was already hers. She hammered the weak spot in his armor:
"Responsible! I should say it is. Mr. Mallory is a soldier, but soldiers are such ferocious, destructive people, while conductors save lives, and—if I were only a man I think it would be my greatest ambition to be a conductor—especially on an overland express."
The conductor told the truth, when he confessed: "Well, I never heard it put just that way." Then he spoke with a little more pride, hoping to increase the impression he felt he was making: "The main thing, of course, is to get my train through On Time!"
This was a facer. He was going to get his trainthrough On Time just to oblige Marjorie. She stammered:
"I don't suppose the train, by any accident, would be delayed in leaving Ogden?"
"Not if I can help it," the hero averred, to reassure her.
"I wish it would," Marjorie murmured.
The conductor looked at her in surprise: "Why, what's it to you?" She turned her eyes on him at full candle power, and smiled:
"Oh, I just wanted to do a little shopping there."
"Shopping! While the train waits! Excuse me!"
"You see," Marjorie fluttered, "by a sad mistake, my baggage isn't on the train. And I haven't any—any—I really need to buy some—some things very badly. It's awfully embarrassing to be without them."
"I can imagine," the conductor mumbled. "Why don't you and your husband drop off and take the next train?"
"My husb—Mr. Mallory has to be in San Francisco by to-morrow night. He just has to!"
"So have I."
"But to oblige me? To save me from distress—don't you think you could?" Like a sweet little child she twisted one of the brass buttons on his coat sleeve, and wheedled: "Don't you think you might hold the train just a little tiny half hour?"
He was sorry, but he didn't see how he could.Then she took his breath away again by asking, out of a clear sky: "Are you married?"
He was as awkward as if she had proposed to him, she answered for him: "Oh, but of course you are. The women wouldn't let a big, handsome, noble brave giant like you escape long." He mopped his brow in agony as she went on: "I'm sure you're a very chivalrous man. I'm sure you would give your life to rescue a maiden in distress. Well, here's your chance. Won't you please hold the train?"
She actually had her cheek almost against his shoulder, though she had to poise atiptoe to reach him. Mallory's dismay was changing to a boiling rage, and the conductor was a pitiable combination of Saint Anthony and Tantalus. "I—I'd love to oblige you," he mumbled, "but it would be as much as my job's worth."
"How much is that?" Marjorie asked, and added reassuringly, "If you lost your job I'm sure my father would get you a better one."
"Maybe," said the conductor, "but—I got this one."
Then his rolling eyes caught sight of the supposed husband gesticulating wildly and evidently clearing for action. He warned Marjorie: "Say, your husband is motioning at you."
"Don't mind him," Marjorie urged, "just listen to me. I implore you. I——" Seeing that he was still resisting, she played her last card, and, crying,"Oh, you can't resist my prayers so cruelly," she threw her arms around his neck, sobbing, "Do you want to break my heart?"
Mallory rushed into the scene and the conductor, tearing Marjorie's arms loose, retreated, gasping, "No! and I don't want your husband to break my head."
Mallory dragged Marjorie away, but she shook her little fist at the conductor, crying: "Do you refuse? Do you dare refuse?"
"I've got to," the conductor abjectly insisted.
Marjorie blazed with fury and the siren became a Scylla. "Then I'll see that my father gets you discharged. If you dare to speak to me again, I'll order my husband to throw you off this train. To think of being refused a simple little favor by a mere conductor! of a stupid old emigrant train!! of all things!!!"
Then she hurled herself into a chair and pounded her heels on the floor in a tantrum that paralyzed Mallory. Even the conductor tapped him on the shoulder and said: "You have my sympathy."
As the conductor left the Mallorys to their own devices, it rushed over him anew what sacrilege had been attempted—a fool bride had asked him to stop the Trans-American of all trains!—to go shopping of all things!
He stormed into the smoking room to open the safety valve of his wrath, and found the porter just coming out of the buffet cell with a tray, two hollow-stemmed glasses and a bottle swaddled in a napkin.
"Say, Ellsworth, what in —— do you suppose that female back there wants?—wants me to hold the Trans-American while——"
But the porter was in a flurry himself. He was about to serve champagne, and he cut the conductor short:
"'Scuse me, boss, but they's a lovin' couple in the stateroom forward that is in a powerful hurry for this. I can't talk to you now. I'll see you later." And he swaggered off, leaving the door of the buffet open. The conductor paused to close it, glanced in, started, stared, glared, roared: "What's this! Well, I'll be—a dog smuggled in here! I'll breakthat coon's head. Come out of there, you miserable or'nary hound." He seized the incredulous Snoozleums by the scruff of his neck, growling, "It's you for the baggage car ahead," and dashed out with his prey, just as Mallory, now getting new bearings on Marjorie's character, spoke across the rampart of his Napoleonically folded arms:
"Well, you're a nice one!—making violent love to a conductor before my very eyes. A minute more and I would have——"
She silenced him with a snap: "Don't you speak to me! I hate you! I hate all men. The more I know men the more I like——" this reminded her, and she asked anxiously: "Where is Snoozleums?"
Mallory, impatient at the shift of subject, snapped back: "Oh, I left him in the buffet with the waiter. What I want to know is how you dare to——"
"Was it a colored waiter?"
"Of course. But I'm not speaking of——"
"But suppose he should bite him?"
"Oh, you can't hurt those nigger waiters. I started to say——"
"But I can't have Snoozleums biting colored people. It might not agree with him. Get him at once."
Mallory trembled with suppressed rage like an overloaded boiler, but he gave up and growled: "Oh, Lord, all right. I'll get him when I've finished——"
"Go get him this minute. And bring the poor darling back to his mother."
"His mother! Ye gods!" cried Mallory, wildly. He turned away and dashed into the men's room with a furious: "Where's that damned dog?"
He met the porter just returning. The porter smiled: "He's right in heah, sir," and opened the buffet door. His eyes popped and his jaw sagged: "Why, I lef' him here just a minute ago."
"You left the window open, too," Mallory observed. "Well, I guess he's gone."
The porter was panic stricken: "Oh, I'm turrible sorry, boss, I wouldn't have lost dat dog for a fortune. If you was to hit me with a axe I wouldn't mind."
To his utter befuddlement, Mallory grinned and winked at him, and murmured: "Oh, that's all right. Don't worry." And actually laid half a dollar in his palm. Leaving the black lids batting over the starting eyes, Mallory pulled his smile into a long face and went back to Marjorie like an undertaker: "My love, prepare yourself for bad news."
Marjorie looked up, startled and apprehensive: "Snoozleums is ill. He did bite the darkey."
"Worse than that—he—he—fell out of the window."
"When!" she shrieked, "in heaven's name—when?"
"He was there just a minute ago, the waiter says."
Marjorie went into instant hysterics, wringing her hands and sobbing: "Oh, my darling, my poor child—stop the train at once!"
She began to pound Mallory's shoulders and shake him frantically. He had never seen her this way either. He was getting his education in advance. He tried to calm her with inexpert words: "How can I stop the train? Now, dearie, he was a nice dog, but after all, he was only a dog."
She rounded on him like a panther: "Only a dog! He was worth a dozen men like you. You find the conductor at once, command him to stop this train—and back up! I don't care if he has to go back ten miles. Run, tell him at once. Now, you run!"
Mallory stared at her as if she had gone mad, but he set out to run somewhere, anywhere. Marjorie paced up and down distractedly, tearing her hair and moaning, "Snoozleums, Snoozleums! My child. My poor child!" At length her wildly roving eyes noted the bell rope. She stared, pondered, nodded her head, clutched at it, could not reach it, jumped for it several times in vain, then seized a chair, swung it into place, stood up in it, gripped the rope, and came down on it with all her weight, dropping to the floor and jumping up and down in a frenzied dance. In the distance the engine could be heard faintly whistling, whistling for every pull.
The engineer, far ahead, could not imagine whatunheard-of crisis could bring about such mad signals. The fireman yelled:
"I bet that crazy conductor is attacked with an epilettic fit."
But there was no disputing the command. The engine was reversed, the air brakes set, the sand run out and every effort made to pull the iron horse, as it were, back on its haunches.
The grinding, squealing, jolting, shook the train like an earthquake. The shrieking of the whistle froze the blood like a woman's cry of "Murder!" in the night. The women among the passengers echoed the screams. The men turned pale and braced themselves for the shock of collision. Some of them were mumbling prayers. Dr. Temple and Jimmie Wellington, with one idea in their dissimilar souls, dashed from the smoking room to go to their wives.
Ashton and Wedgewood, with no one to care for but themselves, seized windows and tried to fight them open. At last they budged a sash and knelt down to thrust their heads out.
"I don't see a beastly thing ahead," said Wedgewood, "except the heads of other fools."
"We're slowing down though," said Ashton, "she stops! We're safe. Thank God!" And he collapsed into a chair. Wedgewood collapsed into another, gasping: "Whatevah are we safe from, I wondah?"
The train-crew and various passengers descended and ran alongside the train asking questions. Panic gave way to mystery. Even Dr. Temple came back into the smoking room to finish a precious cigar he had been at work on. He was followed by Little Jimmie, who had not quite reached his wife when the stopping of the train put an end to his excuse for chivalry. He was regretfully mumbling:
"It would have been such a good shansh to shave my life's wife—I mean my—I don't know what I mean." He sank into a chair and ordered a drink; then suddenly remembered his vow, and with great heroism, rescinded the order.
Mallory, finding that the train was checked just before he reached the conductor, saw that official's bewildered wrath at the stoppage and had a fearsome intuition that Marjorie had somehow done the deed. He hurried back to the observation room, where he found her charging up and down, still distraught. He paused at a safe distance and said:
"The train has stopped, my dear. Somebody rang the bell."
"I guess somebody did!" Marjorie answered, with a proud toss of the head. "Where's the conductor?"
"He's looking for the fellow that pulled the rope."
"You go tell him to back up—and slowly, too."
"No, thank you!" said Mallory. He was a brave young man, but he was not bearding the conductorsof stopped expresses. Already the conductor's voice was heard in the smoking room, where he appeared with the rush and roar of a Bashan bull. "Well!" he bellowed, "which one of you guys pulled that rope?"
"It was nobody here, sir," Dr. Temple meekly explained. The conductor transfixed him with a baleful glare: "I wouldn't believe a gambler on oath. I bet you did it."
"I assure you, sir," Wedgewood interposed, "he didn't touch it. I was heah."
The conductor waved him aside and charged into the observation room, followed by all the passengers in an awe struck rabble. Here, too, the conductor thundered: "Who pulled that rope? Speak up somebody."
Mallory was about to sacrifice himself to save Marjorie, but she met the conductor's black rage with the withering contempt of a young queen: "I pulled the old rope. Whom did you suppose?"
The conductor almost dropped with apoplexy at finding himself with nobody to vent his immense rage on, but this pink and white slip. "You!" he gulped, "well, what in——Say, in the name of—why, don't you know it's a penitentiary offense to stop a train this way?"