CHAPTER XVIII
BREAKING THE TRAIL
Atmidnight orders came. The road was open, the wires up, and the delayed train, in three sections, pulled out for the hills. The big pilot plough that had “bucked” the beautiful Miss Landon out of the right-of-way and into the arms of McGuire ran ahead, followed by the Rockaway with two cars, while a couple of heavy mountain-climbers brought up the coaches and sleepers.
McGuire watched, like a faithful slave, at the door of the merchant’s stateroom, for he was hard hit by the hand and eyes of the merchant’s daughter. The heavy car rocked gently on the curves as the big engines, with much slipping and sanding, toiled to the summit of Cerro Hill. In a little while they were rolling along the banks of the Gunnison, and the silent river was slipping past them under the snow. At sunrise, having toiled up another long, hard hill, thetrain stood at the crest of the continent, ten thousand feet above the sea.
McGuire regretted that the old gentleman had taken a drawing-room, for when they had a section in the body of the car, the conductor could see the beautiful woman as he passed up and down. Now, if she chose to do so, she could isolate herself utterly. While the grim drivers were oiling round, the young lady appeared upon the platform, smiled at McGuire, and asked him to help her down.
“Papa’s still sleeping, and I don’t want to miss the view.”
The conductor opened a narrow door in the big, smoky snow-shed, and they stepped out into the crisp, sunny air.
“Oh! how perfectly beautiful,” exclaimed the enthusiastic girl, gazing over the top of aspen groves, where the trees were hung with millions of jewels that sparkled and quivered in the morning sun.
When the train had begun to wind away down the mountain side the conductor brought a camp stool, and the young lady sat upon the rear platform of the rearmost car and watchedthe mountains spring up in their wake. Once, when they were rounding a long curve, the conductor asked her to look over the low range, Poncho Pass, that walls the San Luis away from the Arkansas Valley, and there she saw an even hundred miles of the snowy Sangre de Cristo, lifting her white crest far up into the burnished blue.
Presently, when they had dropped into the cañon, and there were no more mountains to be seen, Miss Landon asked the conductor to send her the words of the song his friends had sung to them over beyond the Rockies.
“I’ll write you the chorus now, on a leaf from my train-book.”
“Oh, do you remember it?”
“I ought to; I have heard it all my life.”
“Then it was not made for us—for you, I mean?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Then how did it happen to have our—your name?”
“Oh, McGuire is a common Irish name, you know. But was it your name, as well? Is your name Kate?”
She smiled and nodded.
“Then my friends were innocent, for I’m sure they did not know it, or they never would have sung that song. It must have seemed awfully rude to you.”
“On the contrary, I thought it extremely clever, and flattered myself that I had been the inspiration, or part of it, at least. Anyway, you’ll send me the song, won’t you?”
“With pleasure,” and he wrote her name and waited for the address.
“Just Gloucester—everybody knows us—or papa, at least.”
“Thank you,” said the conductor, closing his book.
“Thankyou.”
“For what?”
“For saving the life of a poor girl and bringing her back to her papa, like a good bear, when you might have carried her away to the hills.”
Now, the light engines that had helped them up the mountain began whistling for Salida.
“I get off here,” said McGuire, rising.
“Oh! is this the end?”
“Of my run, yes, and this has been the best trip I ever had.”
“Do you call it a good trip when you are a day late?”
“I call this a good trip. And that reminds me that I have not made out my report.”
“What will you report?”
“The cause of the delay.”
“And the effect?”
“Yes,” said McGuire, with his heart hitting his vest like a trip-hammer, “but not now. I’ll make that report when other men are reporting to me.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“You will when you see my report. Listen! When I am the Superintendent and have outgrown this beastly uniform, I’ll send you that song, and if you get it, then I’ll forward my report.”
He was so handsome, his eyes glowing with the light of love, his voice so full of emotion, that a woman with cooler blood than that which flowed in the veins of the Gloucester girl might have been moved.
She held out her hand (she had removed oneof her gloves) and McGuire seized it. Glancing through the glass door, he raised it to his lips, and she suffered him to do so.
She felt the ring on his finger, and remembered that she had felt it once before. It was his hand that she had pressed, accidentally, over there in the storm.
When the train swung ’round the curve and stopped at the station, the conductor touched his cap and dropped off.
When he had registered “in” he came out, and the Gloucester girl, watching at the window, saw him cross the little swinging bridge and lose himself in the narrow, unpaved streets of what, to her, seemed a dreary little town.