They walked back to the parlors. Doctor Lanning and Marie were picking up the rackets at the ping-pong table. Mrs. Whitney had gone into the office for the evening mail.
Passing the piano, Gertrude sat down and swung around toward the keys. Glover took music from the table. Unwilling to admit a trace of the unusual in the beating of her heart, or in her deeper breathing, she could not entirely control either; there was something too fascinating in defying the light that she now knew glowed in the dull eyes at her side. She avoided looking; enough that the fire was there without directly exposing her own eyes to it. She drummed with one hand, then with both, at a gavotte on the rack before her.
Overcome merely at watching her fingers stretch upon the keys he leaned against the piano.
"Why did you ask me to come up?"
As he muttered the words she picked again and again with her right hand at a loving little phrase in the gavotte. When it went precisely right she spoke in the same tone, still caressing the phrase, never looking up. "Are you sorry you came?"
"No; I'd rather be trod under foot than not be near you."
"May we not be friends without either of us being martyred? I shall be afraid ever to ask you to do anything again. Was I wrong in—assuming it would give you as well as all of us pleasure to dine together this evening?"
"No. You know better than that. I am insanely presumptuous, I know it. Let me ask one last favor——"
The gavotte rippled under her fingers. "No."
He turned away. She swung on the stool toward him and looked very kindly and frankly up. "You have been too courteous to all of us for that. Ask as many favors as you like, Mr. Glover," she murmured, "but not, if you please, a last one."
"It shall be the last, Miss Brock. I only——"
"You only what?"
"Will you let me know what day you are going, so I may say good-by?"
"Certainly I will. You will be at Medicine Bend in any case, won't you?"
"No. I have fifteen hundred miles to cover next week."
"What for—oh, it isn't any of my business, is it?"
"Looking over the snowsheds. Will you telegraph me?"
"Where?"
"At the Wickiup; it will reach me."
"You might have to come too far. We shall start in a few days."
"Will you telegraph me?"
"If you wish me to."
Eight days later, when suspense had grown sullen and Glover had parted with all hope of hearing from her, he heard. In the depths of the Heart River range her message reached him.
Every day Giddings, hundreds of miles away at the Wickiup, had had his route-list. Giddings, who would have died for the engineer, waited, every point in the repeating covered, day after day for a Glen Tarn message that Glover expected. For four days Glover had hung like a dog around the nearer stretches of the division. But the season was advanced, he dared not delegate the last vital inspection of the year, and bitterly he retreated from shed to shed until he was buried in the barren wastes of the eighth district.
The day in the Heart River mountains is the thin, gray day of the alkali and the sage. On Friday afternoon Glover's car lay sidetracked at the east end of the Nine Mile shed waiting for a limited train to pass. The train was late and the sun was dropping into an ashen strip of wind clouds that hung cold as shrouds to the north and west when the gray-powdered engine whistled for the siding.
Motionless beside the switch Glover saw down the gloom of the shed the shoes wringing fire from the Pullman wheels, and wondered why they were stopping. The conductor from the open vestibule waved to him as the train slowed and ran forward with the message.
"Giddings wired me to wait for your answer, Mr. Glover," said the conductor.
Glover was reading the telegram:
"I may start Saturday.
"G. B."
There was one chance to make it; that was to take the limited train then and there. Bidding the conductor wait he hastened to his car, called for his gripsack, gave his assistant a volley of orders, and boarded a Pullman. Not the preferred stock of the whole system would have availed at that moment to induce an inspection of Nine Mile shed.
There were men that he knew in the sleepers, but he shunned acquaintance and walked on till he found an empty section into which he could throw himself and feast undisturbed on his telegram. He studied it anew, tried to consider coolly whether her message meant anything or nothing, and gloated over the magic of the letters that made her initials: and when he slept, the word last in his heart was Gertrude.
In the morning he breakfasted late in the sunshine of the diner, passed his friends again and secluded himself in his section. Never before had she said "I"; always it had been "we." With eyes half-closed upon the window he repeated the words and spoke her name after them, because every time the speaking drugged him like lotus, until, yielding again to the exhaustion of the week's work and strain, he fell asleep.
When he woke the car was dark; the train conductor, Sid Francis, was sitting beside him, laughing.
"You're sleepy to-day, Mr. Glover."
"Sid, where are we?" asked Glover, looking at his watch; it was four o'clock.
"Grouse Creek."
"Are we that late? What's the matter?"
The conductor nodded toward the window. "Look there."
The sky was gray with a driving haze; a thin sweep of snow flying in the sand of the storm was whitening the sagebrush.
Glover, waking wide, turned to the window. "Where's the wind, Sid?"
"Northwest."
"What's the thermometer?"
"Thirty at Creston; sixty when we left MacDill at noon."
"Everything running?"
"They've been getting the freights into division since noon. There'll be something doing to-night on the range. They sent stock warnings everywhere this morning, but they can't begin to protect the stock between here and Medicine in one day. Pulling hard, isn't she? We're not making up anything."
The porter was lighting the lamps. While they talked it had grown quite dark. Losing time every mile of the way, the train, frost-crusted to the eyelids, got into Sleepy Cat at half-past six o'clock; four hours late.
The crowded yard, as they pulled through it, showed the tie-up of the day's traffic. Long lines of freight cars filled the trackage, and overloaded switch engines struggled with ever-growing burdens to avert the inevitable blockade of the night. Glover's anxiety, as he left the train at the station, was as to whether he could catch anything on the Glen Tarn branch to take him up to the Springs that night, for there he was resolved to get before morning if he had to take an engine for the run.
As he started up the narrow hall leading to the telegraph office he heard the rustle of skirts above. Someone was descending the stairway, and with his face in the light he halted.
"Oh, Mr. Glover."
"Why—Miss Brock!" It was Gertrude.
"What in the world—" he began. His broken voice was very natural, she thought, but there was amazement in his utterance. He noticed there was little color in her face; the deep boa of fur nestling about her throat might account for that.
"What a chance that I should meet you!" she exclaimed, her back hard against the side wall, for the hall was narrow and brought them face to face. She spoke on. "Did you get my——?"
"Did I?" he echoed slowly; "I have travelled every minute since yesterday afternoon to get here——"
Her uneasy laugh interrupted him. "It was hardly worth while, all that."
"—and I was just going up to find out about getting to Glen Tarn."
"Glen Tarn! I left Glen Tarn this afternoon all alone to go to Medicine Bend—papa is there, did you know? He came yesterday with all the directors. Our car was attached for me to the afternoon train coming down." She was certainly wrought up, he thought. "But when we reached here the train I should have taken for Medicine Bend had not come——"
"It is here now."
"Thank heaven, is it?"
"I came in on it."
"Then I can start at last! I have been so nervous. Is this our train? They said our car couldn't be attached to this train, and that I should have to go down in one of the sleepers. I don't understand it at all. Will you have the car sent back to Glen Tarn in the morning, Mr. Glover? And would you get my handbag? I was nearly run over a while ago by some engine or other. I mustn't miss this train——"
"Never fear, never fear," said Glover.
"But Icannotmiss it. Be very, very sure, won't you?"
"Indeed, I shall. The train won't start for some time yet. First let me take you to your car and then make some inquiries. Is no one down with you?"
"No one; I am alone."
"Alone?"
"I expected to have been with papa by this time. It takes so little time to run down, you know, and I telegraphed papa I should come on to meet him. Isn't it most disagreeable weather?"
Glover laughed as he shielded her from the wind. "I suppose that's a woman's name for it."
The car, coupled to a steampipe, stood just east of the station, and Glover, helping her into it, went back after a moment to the telegraph office. It seemed a long time that he was gone, and he returned covered with snow. She advanced quickly to him in her wraps. "Are they ready?"
He shook his head. "I'm afraid you can't get to Medicine to-night."
"Oh, but I must."
"They have abandoned Number Six."
"What does that mean?"
"The train will be held here to-night on account of the storm. There will be no train of any kind down before morning; not then if this keeps up."
"Is there danger of a blockade?"
"There is a blockade."
"Then I must get to papa to-night." She spoke with disconcerting firmness.
"May I suggest?" he asked.
"Certainly."
"Would it not be infinitely better to go back to the Springs?"
"No, that would be infinitely worse."
"It would be comparatively easy—an engine to pull your car up on a special order?"
"I will not go back to the Springs to-night, and I will go to Medicine Bend," she exclaimed, apprehensively. "May I not have a special there as well as to the Springs?"
Until that moment he had never seen anything of her father in her; but her father spoke in every feature; she was a Brock.
Glover looked grave. "You may have, I am sure, every facility the division offers. I make only the point," he said, gently, "that it would be hazardous to attempt to get to the Bend to-night. I have just come from the telegraph office. In the district I left this morning the wires are all down to-night. That is where the storm is coming from. There is a lull here just now, but——"
"I thank you, Mr. Glover, believe me, very sincerely for your solicitude. I have no choice but to go, and if I must, the sooner the better, surely. Is it possible for you to make arrangements for me?"
"It is possible, yes," he answered, guardedly.
"But you hesitate."
"It is a terrible night."
"I like snow, Mr. Glover."
"The danger to-night is the wind."
"Are you afraid of the wind?" There was a touch of ridicule in her half-laughing tone.
"Yes," he answered, "I am afraid of the wind."
"You are jesting."
She saw that he flushed just at the eyes; but he spoke still gently.
"You feel that you must go?"
"I must."
"Then I will get orders at once."
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."
Muffled in wraps Gertrude stood at the front door waiting to leave the car. It had been set in on the siding, and the engine, uncoupled, had disappeared, but she could see shifting lights moving near. One, the bright, green-hooded light, her eyes followed. She watched the furious snow drive and sting hornet-like at its rays as it rose or swung or circled from a long arm. Her straining eyes had watched its coming and going every moment since he left her. When his figure vanished her breath followed it, and when the green light flickered again her breath returned.
The men were endeavoring to reset the switch for the main line contact. Three lights were grouped close about the stand, and after the rod had been thrown, Glover went down on his knee feeling for the points under the snow with his hands before he could signal the engine back; one thing he could not afford, a derail. She saw him rise again and saw, dimly, both his arms spread upward and outward. She saw the tiny lantern swing a cautious incantation, and presently, like a monster apparition, called out of the storm the frosted outlines of the tender loomed from the darkness. The engine was being brought to where this dainty girl passenger could step with least exposure from her vestibule to its cab gangway. With exquisite skill the unwieldy monster, forced in spite of night and stress to do its master's bidding, was being placed for its extraordinary guest.
Picking like a trained beast its backward steps, with cautious strength the throbbing machine, storm-crusted and storm-beaten, hissing its steady defiance at its enemy, halted, and Gertrude was lighted and handed across the short path, passed up inside the canvas door by Glover and helped to the fireman's box.
Out in the storm she heard from the conductor and flagman rough shouts of good luck. Glover nodded to the engineer, the fireman yelled good-by, slammed back the furnace door, and a blinding flash of white heat, for an instant, took Gertrude's senses; when the fireman slammed the door to they were moving softly, the wind was singing at the footboard sash, and the injectors were loading the boiler for the work ahead.
A berth blanket fastened between Gertrude and the side window and a cushion on the box made her comfortable. Under her feet lay a second blanket. She had come in with a smile, but the gloom of the cab gave no light to a smile. Only the gauge faces high above her showed the flash of the bull's-eyes, and the multitude of sounds overawed her.
On the opposite side she could see the engineer, padded snug in a blouse, his head bullet-tight under a cap, the long visor hanging beak-like over his nose. His chin was swathed in a roll of neck-cloth, and his eyes, whether he hooked the long lever at his side or stretched both his arms to latch the throttle, she could never see. Then, or when his hand fell back to the handle of the air, as it always fell, his profile was silent. If she tried to catch his face he was looking always, statue-like, ahead.
Standing behind him, Glover, with a hand on a roof-brace, steadied himself. In spite of the comforts he had arranged for her, Gertrude, in her corner, felt a lonely sense of being in the way. In her father's car there was never lacking the waiting deference of trainmen; in the cab the men did not even see her.
In the seclusion of the car a storm hardly made itself felt; in the cab she seemed under the open sky. The wind buffeted the glass at her side, rattled in its teeth the door in front of her, drank the steaming flame from the stack monstrously, and dashed the cinders upon the thin roof above her head with terrifying force. With the gathering speed of the engine the cracking exhaust ran into a confusing din that deafened her, and she was shaken and jolted. The plunging of the cab grew violent, and with every lurch her cushion shifted alarmingly. She resented Glover's placing himself so far away, and could not see that he even looked toward her. The furnace door slammed until she thought the fireman must have thrown in coal enough to last till morning, but unable to realize the danger of overloading the fire he stopped only long enough to turn various valve-wheels about her feet, and with his back bent resumed his hammering and shovelling as if his very salvation were at stake: so, indeed, that night it was.
Gertrude watched his unremitting toil; his shifty balancing on his footing with ever-growing amazement, but the others gave it not the slightest heed. The engineer looked only ahead, and Glover's face behind him never turned. Then Gertrude for the first time looked through her own sash out into the storm.
Strain as she would, her vision could pierce to nothing beyond the ceaseless sweep of the thin, wild snow across the brilliant flow of the headlight. She looked into the white whirl until her eyes tired, then back to the cab, at the flying shovel of the fireman, the peaked cap of the muffled engineer—at Glover behind him, his hand resting now on the reverse lever hooked high at his elbow. But some fascination drew her eyes always back to that bright circle in the front—to the sinister snow retreating always and always advancing; flowing always into the headlight and out, and above it darkening into the fire that streamed from the dripping stack. A sudden lurch nearly threw her from her seat, and she gave a little scream as the engine righted. Glover beside her like thought caught her outstretched hand. "A curve," he said, bending apologetically toward her ear as she reseated herself. "Is it very trying?"
"No, except that I am in continual fear of falling from my seat—or having to embrace the unfortunate fireman. Oh!" she exclaimed, putting her wrist on Glover's arm as the cab jerked.
"If I could keep out of the fireman's way, I should stand here," he said.
"There is room on the seat here, I think, if you have not wholly deserted me. Oh!"
"I didn't mean to desert you. It is because the snow is packing harder that you are rocked more; the cab has really been riding very smoothly."
She moved forward on the box. "Are you going to sit down?"
"Thank you."
"Oh, don't thank me. I shall feel ever so much safer if you will." He tried to edge up into the corner behind her, pushing the heavy cushion up to support her back. As he did so she turned impatiently, but he could not catch what she said. "Throw it away," she repeated. He chucked the cushion forward below her feet and was about to sit up where she had made room for him when the engineer put both hands to the throttle-bar and shut off. For the first time since they had started Gertrude saw him look around.
"Where's Point of Rocks?" he called to Glover as they slowed, and he looked at his watch. "I'm afraid we're by."
"By?" echoed Glover.
"It looks so."
The fireman opened his furnace with a bang. The engineer got stiffly down and straightened his legs while he consulted with Glover. Both knew they had been running past small stations without seeing them, but to lose Point of Rocks with its freight houses, coal chutes, and water tanks!
They talked for a minute, the engineer climbed up to his seat, the reverse lever was thrown over and they started cautiously back on a hunt for the lost station, both straining their eyes for a glimpse of a light or a building. For twenty minutes they ran back without finding a solitary landmark. When they stopped, afraid to retreat farther, Glover got out into the storm, walked back and forth, and, chilled to the bone, plunged through the shallow drifts from side to side of the right of way in a vain search for reckoning. Railroad men on the rotary, the second day after, exploded Glover's torpedoes eleven miles west of Point of Rocks, where he had fastened them that night to the rails to warn the ploughs asked for when leaving Sleepy Cat.
With his clothing frozen he swung up into the cab. They were lost. She could see his eyes now. She could see his face. Their perilous state she could not understand, nor know; but she knew and understood what she saw in his face and eyes—the resource and the daring. She saw her lover then, master of the elements, of the night and the danger, and her heart went out to his strength.
The three men talked together and the fireman asked the question that none dared answer, "What about the ploughs?"
Would Giddings hold them at Point of Rocks till the Special reported?
Would he send them out to keep the track open regardless of the Special's reaching Point of Rocks?
Had they themselves reached Point of Rocks at all? If past it, had they been seen? Were the ploughs ahead or behind? And the fireman asked another question; if they were by the Point tank, would the water hold till they got to Medicine Bend? No one could answer.
There was but one thing to do; to keep in motion. They started slowly. The alternatives were discussed. Glover, pondering, cast them all up, his awful responsibility, unconscious of her peril, watching him from the fireman's box. The engineer looked to Glover instinctively for instructions and, hesitating no longer, he ordered a dash for Medicine Bend regardless of everything.
Without a qualm the engineer opened his throttle and hooked up his bar and the engine leaped blindly ahead into the storm. Glover, in a few words, told Gertrude their situation. He made no effort to disguise it, and to his astonishment she heard him quietly. He cramped himself down at her feet and muffled his head in his cap and collar to look ahead.
They had hardly more than recovered their lost distance, and were running very hard when a shower of heavy blows struck the cab and the engine gave a frantic plunge. Forgetting that he pulled no train McGraw's eyes flew to the air gauge with the thought his train had broken, but the pointer stood steady at the high pressure. Again the monster machine strained, and again the cab rose and plunged terrifically. The engineer leaped at the throttle like a cat; Gertrude, jolted first backward, was thrown rudely forward on Glover's shoulder, and the fireman slid head first into the oil cans. Worst of all, Glover, in saving Gertrude, put his elbow through the lower glass of the running-board door. The engine stopped and a blast of powdered ice streamed in on them; their eyes met.
She tried to get her breath. "Don't be frightened," he said; "you are all right. Sit perfectly still. What have you got, Paddy?" he called to the engineer. The engineer did not attempt to answer; taking lanterns, the two men climbed out of the cab to investigate. The wind swept through the broken pane and Gertrude slipped down from her seat with relief, while the fireman caught up a big double handful of waste from his box and stuffed it into the broken pane. So intense had the strain of silence become that she would have spoken to him, but the sudden stop sprung the safety-valve, and overwhelmed with its roar she could only watch him in wretched suspense shake the grate, restore his drip can, start his injector, and hammer like one pursued by a fury at the coal. Since she had entered the cab this man had never for one minute rested.
McGraw, followed by Glover, climbed back under the canvas from the gangway. Their clothing, moist with the steam of the cab, had stiffened the instant the wind struck it. McGraw hastening to the furnace seized the chain, jerked open the door and motioned to Glover to come to the fire, but Glover shook his head behind McGraw, his hands on the little man's shoulders, and forced him down in front of the fearful blaze to thaw the gloves from his aching fingers.
All the horror of the storm they were facing had passed Gertrude unfelt until she saw the silent writhing of the crouching man. This was three minutes of the wind that Glover had asked her not to tempt; this was the wind she had tempted. She was glad that Glover, bending over the engineer, holding one hand to the fire as he gazed into it, did not look toward her. From cap to boots he was frozen in snow and ice. The two men, without speaking, left the cab again. They were gone longer. Gertrude felt chills running over her.
"This is a terrible night," she said to the fireman.
"Yes, ma'am, it's pretty bad. I don't know why they'd send white men out into this. I wouldn't send a coyote out."
"They are staying out so long this time," she murmured. "Could they possibly freeze while they are out, do you think?"
"Sure, they could; but them boys know too much for that. Mr. Glover stays out a week at a time in this kind; he don't care. That man Paddy McGraw is his head engineer in the bucking gang; he don't care—them fellows don't care. But I've got a wife at the Cat and two babies, that's my fix. I never cared neither when I was single, but if I'm carried home now it's seven hundred and fifty relief and a thousand dollars in the A. O. U. W., and that's the end of it for the woman. That's why I don't like to freeze to death, ma'am. But what can you do if you're ordered out? Suppose your woman is a-hangin' to your neck like mine hung to me to-night and cryin'—whatever can you do? You've got to go or lose your job; and if you lose your job who'll feed your kids then?"
McGraw's head appeared under the canvas doorway. Glover did not follow him and Gertrude grew alarmed: but when the canvas rattled and she saw his cap she was waiting for him at the doorway and she put her hands happily on his frozen sleeve: "I'm so glad."
He looked at her with humor in his big eyes.
"I was afraid without you," she added, confusedly.
He laughed. "There's nothing to be afraid of."
"Oh, you are so cold. Come to the fire."
"What do you think about the ploughs now?" he asked of McGraw, who had climbed up to his seat.
"How many is there?" returned the engineer as Glover shivered before the fire.
"There may be a thousand."
"What do you want me to do?"
"There's only one thing, Paddy. Go through them," answered Glover, slamming shut the furnace door.
McGraw laid his bar over, and, like one putting his house in order, looked at his gauges and tried his valves.
"What is it?" whispered Gertrude, at Glover's side.
He turned. "We've struck a bunch of sheep."
"Sheep?"
"In a storm they drift to keep from freezing out in the open. These sheep have bunched in a little cut out of the wind," he explained, as the fireman sprinkled the roaring furnace. "You had better get up on your seat, Miss Brock."
"But what are you going to do?"
"Run through them."
"Run through them? Do you mean to kill them?"
"We shall have to kill a few; there isn't much danger."
"But oh, must you mangle those poor creatures huddling in the cut out of the storm? Oh, don't do that."
"We can't help it."
"Oh, yes, yes, you can if you will, I am sure." She looked at him imploringly.
"Indeed I cannot. Listen a moment." He spoke steadily. The wheels were turning under her, the engine was backing for the dash. "We know now the ploughs are not ahead of us, for the cut is full of sheep and snow. If they are behind us we are in grave danger. They may strike us at any moment—that means, do you understand? death. We can't go back now; there's too much snow even if the track were clear. To stay here means to freeze to death." She turned restively from him. "Could you have thought it a joke," he asked, slowly, "to run a hundred and seventy miles through a blizzard?" She looked away and her sob cut him to the heart. "I did not mean to wound you," he murmured. "It's only that you don't realize what self-preservation means. I wouldn't kill a fly unnecessarily, but do you think I could stand it to see anyone in this cab mangled by a plough behind us—or to see you freeze to death if the engine should die and we're caught here twelve hours? It is our lives or theirs, that's all, and they will freeze anyway. We are only putting them out of their misery. Come; we are starting." He helped her to her seat.
"Don't leave me," she faltered. The cylinder cocks were drumming wildly. "Which ever way we turn there's danger," he admitted, reluctantly, "a steam pipe might burst. You must cover your face." She drew the high collar of her coat around her neck and buried her face in her muff, but he caught up a blanket and dropped it completely over her head; then locking her arm in his own he put one heavy boot against the furnace door, and, braced between the woman he loved and the fire-box, nodded to the engineer—McGraw gave head.
Furred with snow, and bearded fearfully with ice; creeping like a mountain-cat on her prey; quivering under the last pound of steam she could carry, and hissing wildly as McGraw stung her heels again and again from the throttle, the great engine moved down on the blocked cut.
Unable to reckon distance or resistance but by instinct, and forced to risk everything for headway, McGraw pricked the cylinders till the smarting engine roared. Then, crouching like a jockey for a final cruel spur he goaded the monster for the last time and rose in his stirrups for the crash.
With never a slip or a stumble, hardly reeling in her ponderous frame, the straining engine plunged headlong into the curve. Only once, she staggered and rolled; once only, three reckless men rose to answer death as it knocked at their hearts; but their hour was not come, and the engine struggled, righted, and parted the living drift from end to end.