The stolen interview of the early
morning was the consolation of the day. Gertrude
confided a resolve to Glover. She had thought
it all out and he must, she said, talk to her father.
Nothing would ever ever come of a situation in which
the two never met. The terrible problem was
how to arrange the interview. Her father had
already declined to meet Glover at all. Moreover,
Mr. Brock had a fund of silence that approximated
absolute zero, and Gertrude dreaded the result if Glover,
in presenting his case, should stop at any point and
succumb to the chill.
During such intervals as they managed
to meet, the lovers could discuss nothing but the
crisis that confronted them. The definite clearing
of the line meant perhaps an early separation and
something must be done, if ever, at once.
In the evening Gertrude made a long
appeal to her aunt to intercede for her, and another
to Marie, who, softening somewhat, had spent half an
hour before dinner in discussing the situation calmly
with Glover; but over the proposed interview Marie
shook her head. She had great influence with
her father, but candidly owned she should dread facing
him on a matter he had definitely declined to discuss.
They parted at night without light
on their difficulties. In the morning Glover
made several ineffectual efforts to see Gertrude early.
He had an idea that they had forgotten the one who
could advise and help them better than any other his
friend and patron, Bucks.
The second vice-president was now
closer in a business way to Mr. Brock than anyone
else in the world. They were friends of very
early days, of days when they were laying together
the foundations of their careers. It was Bucks
who had shown Mr. Brock the stupendous possibilities
in reorganizing the system, who was responsible for
his enormous investment, and each reposed in the other
entire confidence. Gertrude constantly contended
that it was only a question of her father’s
really knowing Glover, and that if her lover could
be put, as she knew him, before her father, he must
certainly give way. Why not, then, take Bucks
into their confidence?
It seemed like light from heaven to
Glover, and he was talking to Gertrude when there
came a rap at the door of the parlor and a messenger
entered with a long despatch from Callahan at Sleepy
Cat.
The message was marked delayed in
transmission. Glover walked with it to the window
and read:
“Doubleday’s outfit wrecked
early this morning on Pilot Hill while bucking.
Head engine, the 927, McGraw, partly off track.
Tender crushed the cab. Doubleday instantly
killed and McGraw badly hurt. Morris Blood is
reported to have been in the cab also, but cannot be
found. Have sent Doubleday and McGraw to Medicine
Bend in my car and am starting with wrecking crew
for the Hill.”
“What is it?” murmured
Gertrude, watching her lover’s face. He
studied the telegram a long time and she came to his
side. He raised his eyes from the paper in his
hand and looked out of the window. “What
is it?” she whispered.
“Pilot Hill.”
“I do not understand, dearest.”
“A wreck.”
“Oh, is it serious?”
His eyes fell again on the death message.
“Morris Blood was in it and they can’t
find him.”
“Oh, oh.”
“A bad place; a bad, bad place.”
He spoke, absently, then his eyes turned upon her
with inexpressible tenderness.
“But why can’t they find him, dearest?”
“The track is blasted out of
the mountain side for half a mile. Bucks said
it would be a graveyard, but I couldn’t get to
the mines in any other way. Gertrude, I must
go to the Wickiup at once to get further news.
This message has been delayed, the wires are not right
yet.”
“Will you come back soon?”
“Just the minute I can get definite
news about Morris. In half an hour, probably.”
She tried to comfort him when he left
her. She knew of the deep attachment between
the two men, and she encouraged her lover to hope
for the best. Not until he had gone did she fully
realize how deeply he was moved. At the window
she watched him walk hurriedly down the street, and
as he disappeared, reflected that she had never seen
such an expression on his face as when he read the
telegram.
The half hour went while she reflected.
Going downstairs she found the news of the wreck
had spread about the hotel, and widely exaggerated
accounts of the disaster were being discussed.
Mrs. Whitney and Marie were out sleighriding, and
by the time the half hour had passed without word
from Glover, Gertrude gave way to her restlessness.
She had a telegram to send to New York an
order for bonbons and she determined
to walk down to the Wickiup to send it; she might,
she thought, see Glover and hear his news sooner.
When she approached the headquarters
building unusual numbers of railroad men were grouped
on the platform, talking. Messengers hurried
to and from the roundhouse. A blown engine attached
to a day coach was standing near and men were passing
in and out of the car. Gertrude made her way
to the stairs unobserved, walked leisurely up to the
telegraph office and sent her message. The long
corridors of the building, gloomy even on bright days,
were quite dark as she left the operators’ room
and walked slowly toward the quarters of the construction
department.
The door of the large anteroom was
open and the room empty. Gertrude entered hesitatingly
and looked toward Glover’s office. His
door also was ajar, but no one was within. The
sound of voices came from a connecting room and she
at once distinguished Glover’s tones. It
was justification: with her coin purse she tapped
lightly on the door casing, and getting no response
stepped inside the office and slipped into a chair
beside his desk to await him. The voices came
from a room leading to Callahan’s apartments.
Glover was asking questions, and a
man whose voice she could now hear breaking with sobs,
was answering. “Are you sure your signals
were right?” she heard Glover ask slowly and
earnestly; and again, patiently, “how could
you be doubled up without the flanger’s leaving
the track?” Then the man would repeat his story.
“You must have had too much
behind you,” Glover said once.
“Too much?” echoed the
man, frantically. “Seven engines behind
us all day yesterday. Paddy told him the minute
he got in the cab she wouldn’t never stand it.
He told him it as plain as a man could tell a man.
Then because we went through a thousand feet in the
gap like cheese he ordered us up the hill. When
we struck the big drift it was slicing rock, Mr. Glover.
Paddy told him she wouldn’t never stand it.
The very first push we let go in a hundred feet with
the engine churning her damned drivers off.
We went into it twice that way. I could see
it was shoving the tender up in the air every time
and told Doubleday oh, if you’d been
there! The next time we sent the plough through
the first crust and drove a wind-pocket maybe forty
or fifty yards and hit the ice with the seven engines
jamming into us. My God! she doubled up like
a jack-knife Pat, Pat, Pat.”
“Can you recollect where Blood
was standing when you buckled?”
“In the right gangway.”
There was a pause. “He must have dropped,”
she heard Glover say.
“Then he’ll never drop
again, Mr. Glover, for if he slipped off the ties
he’d drop a thousand feet.”
“The heaviest snow is right at the top of the
hill?”
“Yes, sir.”
“If we can cross the hill we can find him anyway.”
“Don’t try to get across
that hill till you put in five hundred shovellers,
Mr. Glover.”
“That would take a week.
If he’s alive we must get him within twenty-four
hours. He may freeze to death to-night.”
“Don’t try to cross that
hill with a plough, Mr. Glover. Mind my words.
It’s no use. I’ve bucked with you
many a time you know that.”
“Yes.”
“You’re going to your death when you try
that.”
“There’s the doctor now,
Foley,” Glover answered. “Let him
look you over carefully. Come this way.”
The voices receded. Listening
to the talk, little of which she understood, a growing
fear had come over Gertrude. Her eyes had pierced
the gray light about her, and as she heard Glover walk
away she rose hurriedly and stepped to the doorway
to detain him. Glover had disappeared, but before
her, stretched on the couch back of the table, lay
McGraw. She knew him instantly, and so strangely
did the gloom shroud his features that his steady
eyes seemed looking straight at her. She divined
that he had been brought back hurt. A chill passed
over her, a horror. She hesitated a moment, and,
fascinated, stepped closer; then she knew she was
staring at the dead.
Terror-stricken and with sinking strength
she made her way to the hotel and slipped up to the
parlor. Throwing off her wraps she went to the
window; Glover was coming up the street. There
was only a moment in which to collect herself.
She hastened to her bedroom, wet her forehead with
cologne, and at her mirror her fingers ran tremblingly
over the coils of her hair. She caught up a fresh
handkerchief for her girdle, looked for an instant
appealingly into her own eyes and closed them to think.
Glover rapped.
She met him with a smile that she
knew would stagger his fond eyes. She drugged
his ear with a low-voiced greeting. “You
are late, dearest.”
He looked at her and caught her hands.
As his head bent she let her lips lie in his kiss,
and let his arm find her waist as he kissed her deeply
again. They walked together toward the fireplace,
and when she saw the sadness of his face fear in her
heart gave way to pity. “What is it?”
she whispered. “Tell me.”
“The car has come with Doubleday
and McGraw, Gertrude. The wreck was terribly
fatal. Morris Blood must have jumped from the
cab. The track I have told you is blasted there
out of the cheek of the mountain, and it’s impossible
to tell what his fate may be: but if he is alive
I must find him. There is a good hope, I believe,
for Morris; he is a man to squeeze through on a narrow
chance. And Gertrude I couldn’t
tell you if I didn’t think you had a right to
know everything I know. It breaks my heart to
speak of it McGraw is dead.”
“I am so glad you told me the
truth,” she trembled, “for I knew it
“Knew it?” She confessed,
hastily, how her anxiety had led her to his office,
and of the terrible shock she had brought on herself.
“But now I know you would not deceive me,”
she added; “that is why I love you, because
you are always honest and true. And do you love
me, as you have told me, more than all the world?”
“More than all the world, Gertrude.
Why do you look so? You are trembling.”
“Have you come to say good-by?”
“Only for a day or two, darling:
till I can find Morris, then I come straight back
to you.”
“You, too, may be killed?”
“No, no.”
“But I heard the man telling
you you would go to your death if you attempted to
cross that hill with a plough. Be honest with
me; you are risking your life.”
“Only as I have risked it almost
every day since I came into the mountains.”
“But now now doesn’t
it mean something else? Think what it means to
me your life. Think what will become
of me if you should be killed in trying to open that
hill if you should fall over a precipice
as Morris Blood has fallen and lies now probably dead.
Don’t go. Don’t go, this time.
You have promised me you would leave the mountains,
haven’t you? Don’t risk all, dearest,
all I have on earth, in an attempt that may utterly
fail and add one more precious life to the lives now
sacrificed. You do heed me, darling, don’t
you?”
She had disengaged herself to plead;
to look directly up into his perplexed eyes.
He leaned an arm on the mantel, staggered. His
eyes followed hers in every word she spoke, and when
she ceased he stared blankly at the fire.
“Heed you?” he answered,
haltingly. “Heed you? You are all
in the world that I have to heed. My only wish
is your happiness; to die for it, Gertrude, wouldn’t
be much
“All, all I ask is that you will live for it.”
“Worthless as I am, I have asked
you to put that happiness in my keeping do
you think your lightest word could pass me unheeded?
But to this, my dearest Gertrude, every instinct
of manhood binds me to go to my friend
in danger.”
“If you go you will take every
desperate chance to accomplish your end. Ah,
I know you better than you know yourself. Ab,
Ab, my darling, my lover, listen to me. Don’t;
don’t go.”
When he spoke she would not have known
his voice. “Can I let him die there like
a dog on the mountain side? Can’t you see
what I haven’t words to explain as you could
explain the position it puts me in?
Don’t sob. Don’t be afraid; look
at me. I’ll come back to you, darling.”
She turned her tearless eyes to the
mountains. “Back! Yes. I see
the end. My lover will come back come
back dead. And I shall try to kiss his brave
lips back to life and they will speak no more.
And I shall stand when they take him from me, lonely
and alone. My father that I have estranged my
foster-mother that I have withstood my sister
that I have repelled will their tears flow
for me then? And for this I broke from my traditions
and cast away associations, gave up all my little
life, stood alone against my family, poured out my
heart to these deserts, these mountains, and now they
rob me of my all and this is love!”
He stood like a broken man.
“God help me, have I laid on your dear head
the curse of my own life? Must you, too, suffer
because our perils force us lightly to pawn our lives
one for another? One night in that yard” he
pointed to the window “I stood between
the rails with a switch engine running me down.
I knew nothing of it. There was no time to
speak, no time to think it was on me.
Had Blood left me there one second I never should
have looked into your dear face. Up on the hill
with Hailey and Brodie, under the gravel and shale,
I should never have cost your heart an ache like this.
Better the engine had struck me then and spared you
now
“No, I say, no!” she exclaimed,
wildly. “Better this moment together than
a lifetime apart!”
“ For me he threw
himself in front of the drivers. This moment
is mine and yours because he gave his right hand for
it shall I desert him now he needs me?
And so a hundred times and in a hundred ways we gamble
with death and laugh if we cheat it: and our poor
reward is only sometimes to win where far better men
have failed. So in this railroad life two men
stand, as he and I have stood, luck or ill-luck, storm
or fair weather, together. And death speaks
for one; and whichever he calls it is ever the other
must answer. And this is duty.”
“Then do your duty.”
Distinctly, and terrifying in their
unexpectedness, came the words from the farther end
of the parlor. They turned, stunned. Gertrude’s
father was crossing the room. He raised his hand
to dispel Glover’s sudden angry look.
“I was lying on the couch; your voices roused
me and I could not escape. You have put clearly
the case you stand in,” he spoke to Glover,
“and I have intervened only to spare both of
you useless agony of argument. The question
that concerns you two and me is not at this moment
up for decision; the other question is, and it is
for you, my daughter, now, to play the woman.
I have tried as I could to shield you from rough
weather. You have left port without consulting
me, and the storms of womanhood are on you. Sir,
when do you start?”
“My engine is waiting.”
“Then ask your people to attach
my car. You can make equally good time, and
since for better or worse we have cut into this game
we will see it out together.”
Gertrude threw her arms around her
father’s neck with a happy sob as Glover left.
“Oh daddy, daddy. If you only knew him!”