by Zane Grey
“How shall I ever reach that step?” she exclaimed, breaking in upon her own words and obstinately buffeting his own as she gazed with more than necessary dismay at the high vestibule tread.
“Would you hold the flowers a moment—” he asked—her sister appeared at the door—“so I may help you?” continued the patient railroad man.
“See, Marie, these dear flowers!” Marie clapped her hands as she ran forward. He held the flowers up. “Are they for me?” she cried.
“Will you take them?” he asked, as she bent over the guard-rail. “Oh, gladly.” He turned instantly, but Gertrude had gained the step. “Thank you, thank you,” exclaimed Marie. “What is their name, Mr. Glover?”
“I don’t know any name for them except an Indian name. The Sioux, up in their country, call them sky-eyes.”
“Sky-eyes! Isn’t that dear? sky-eyes.”
“You are heated,” continued Marie, looking at him, “you have walked a long way. Where in all this desolate, desolate country could you find flowers such as these?”
“Back a little way in a cañon.”
“Are there many in a desert like this?”
“I know of none—at least within many miles—yet there may be others in nearby hiding-places. The desert is full of surprises.”
“You are so warm, are you not coming up to sit down while I get a bowl?”
“I will go forward, thank you, and see when we are to get away. Your sister,” he added, looking evenly at Marie as Gertrude stood beside her, “asked this morning why there were no flowers in this country, and while we were delayed I happened to recollect that cañon and the sky-eyes.”
“I think your stupid man the most interesting we have met since we left home, Gertrude,” remarked Marie at her embroidery after dinner.
“I told you he would be,” said Mrs. Whitney, suppressing a yawn. Gertrude was playing ping-pong with Doctor Lanning. “But isn’t he homely?” she exclaimed, sending a cut ball into the doctor’s watch-chain.
Louise returned soon with Allen Harrison from the forward car.
“The programme for the evening is arranged,” she announced, “and it’s fine. We are to have a big campfire over near that butte—right out under the stars. And Mr. Blood is going to tell a story, and while he’s telling it, Mr. Glover—oh, drop your ping-pong, won’t you, and listen—has promised to make taffy and we are to pull it—won’t that be jolly? and then the coyotes are to howl.”
A little later all left the car together. Above the copper edge of the desert ranges the moon was rising full and it brought the nearer buttes up across the stretches of the night like sentinels. In the sky a multitude of stars trembled, and wind springing from the south fanned the fire growing on the plateau just off the right of way.
The party disposed themselves in camp-chairs and on ties about the big fire. Near at hand, Glover, who already had a friend in Clem, the cook, was feeding chips into a little blaze under a kettle slung with his taffy mixture, which the women in turn inspected, asked questions about, and commented sceptically upon.
Doctor Lanning brought his banjo, and when the party had settled low about the fire it helped to keep alive the talk. Every few minutes the taffy and the coyotes were demanded in turn, and Glover was kept busy apologizing for the absence of the wolves and the slowness of his kettle, under which he fed the small chips regularly.
As the night air grew sharper more wraps were called for. When Doctor Lanning and Mrs. Whitney started after them they asked Gertrude what they should bring her, but she said she needed nothing.
As she sat, she could see Glover, her sister Marie on a stool beside him, watching the boiling taffy. With one foot doubled under him for a seat, and an elbow supported on his knee he steadied himself like a camp cook behind his modest fire; but even as he crouched the blaze threw him up astonishingly tall. Heedless of the chatter around the big fire the man whose business was to bridle rivers, fight snowslides, raze granite hills, and dispute for their dizzy passes with the bighorn and the bear, bent patiently above his pot of molasses, a coaxing stick in one hand and a careful chip in the other.
“Where, pray, Mr. Glover, did you learn that?” demanded Marie Brock. He had been explaining the chemical changes that follow each stage of the boiling in sugar. “I learned the taffy business from the old negro mammy that ‘raised’ me down on the Mississippi, Aunt Chloe. She taught me everything I know—except mathematics—and mathematics I don’t know anyway.” Mrs. Whitney was distributing the wraps. “I would have brought your Newmarket if I could have found it, Gertrude.”
“Her Newmarket!” exclaimed Allen Harrison. “Gertrude hasn’t told the Newmarket story, eh? She threw it over a tramp asleep in the rain down at the Spider Water bridge.”
“What?”
“—And was going to disown me because I wouldn’t give up my overcoat for a tarpaulin.”
“Gertrude Brock!” exclaimed Mrs. Whitney. “Your Newmarket! Then you deserve to freeze,” she declared, settling under her fur cape. “What will she do next? Now, Mr. Blood, we are all here; what about that story?”
Morris Blood turned. Glover, Marie Brock watching, tested the foaming candy. Doctor Lanning, on a cushion, strummed his banjo.
In front of Gertrude, Harrison, inhaling a cigarette, stretched before the fire. Declining a stool, Gertrude was sitting on a chair of ties. One, projecting at her side, made a rest for her elbow and she reclined her head upon her hand as she watched the flames leap.
“The incident Miss Donner asked about occurred when I was despatching,” began the superintendent.
“Oh, are you a despatcher, too?” asked Louise, clasping her hands upon her knee as she leaned forward.
“They would hardly trust me with a train-sheet now; this was some time ago.”
CHAPTER IV
AS THE DESPATCHER SAW
“If you can recollect the blizzard that Roscoe Conkling went down in one March day in the streets of New York, it will give you the date; possibly call to your mind the storm. I had the River Division then, and we got through the whole winter without a single tie-up of consequence until March.
“The morning was still as June. When the sky went heavy at noon it looked more like a spring shower than a snow-storm; only, I noticed over at the government building they were flying a black flag splashed with a red centre. I had not seen it before for years, and I asked for ploughs on every train out after two o’clock.
“Even then there was no wickedness abroad; it was coming fairly heavy in big flakes, but lying quiet as apple-blossoms. Toward four o’clock I left the office for the roundhouse, and got just about half-way across the yard when the wind veered like a scared semaphore. I had left the depot in a snow-storm; I reached the roundhouse in a blizzard.
“There was no time to wait to get back to the keys. I telephoned orders over from the house, and the boys burned the wires, east and west, with warnings. When the wind went into the north that day at four o’clock, it was murder pure and simple, with the snow sweeping the flat like a shroud and the thermometer water-logged at zero.
“All night it blew, with never a minute’s let-up. By ten o’clock half our wires were down, trains were failing all over the division, and before midnight every plough on the line was bucking snow—and the snow was coming harder. We had given up all idea of moving freight, and were centring everything on the passenger trains, when a message came from Beverly that the fast mail was off track in the cut below the hill, and I ordered out the wrecking gang and a plough battery for the run down.
“It was a fearful night to make up a train in a hurry—as much as a man’s life was worth to work even slow in the yard a night like that. But what limit is set to a switchman’s courage I have never known, because I’ve never known one to balk at a yardmaster’s order.
“I went to work clearing the lin
e, and forgot all about everything outside the train-sheet till a car-tink came running in with word that a man was hurt in the yard.
“Some men get used to it; I never do. As much as I have seen of railroad life, the word that a man’s hurt always hits me in the same place. Slipping into an ulster, I pulled a storm-cap over my ears and hurried down stairs buttoning my coat. The arc-lights, blinded in the storm, swung wild across the long yard, and the wind sung with a scream through the telegraph wires. Stumbling ahead, the big car-tink, facing the storm, led me to where between the red and the green lamps a dozen men hovered close to the gangway of a switch engine. The man hurt lay under the forward truck of the tender.
“They had just got the wrecking train made up, and this man, running forward after setting a switch, had flipped the tender of the backing engine and slipped from the footboard. When I bent over him, I saw he was against it. He knew it, too, for the minute they shut off and got to him he kept perfectly still, asking only for a priest.
“I tried every way I could think of to get him free from the wheels. Two of us crawled under the tender to try to figure it out. But he lay so jammed between the front wheel and the hind one, and tender trucks are so small and the wheels so close together that to save our lives we could neither pull ahead nor back the engine without further mutilating him.
“As I talked to him I took his hand and tried to explain that to free him we should have to jack up the truck. He heard, he understood, but his eyes, glittering like the eyes of a wounded animal with shock, wandered uneasily while I spoke, and when I had done, he closed them to grapple with the pain. Presently a hand touched my shoulder; the priest had come, and throwing open his coat knelt beside us. He was a spare old man—none too good a subject himself, I thought, for much exposure like that—but he did not seem to mind. He dropped on his knees and, with both hands in the snow, put his head in behind the wheel close to the man’s face. What they said to each other lasted only a moment, and all the while the boys were keying like madmen at the jacks to ease the wheel that had crushed the switchman’s thigh. When they got the truck partly free, they lifted the injured man back a little where we could all see his face. They were ready to do more, but the priest, wiping the water and snow from the failing man’s lips and forehead, put up his fingers to check them.
“The wind, howling around the freight-cars strung about us, sucked the guarded lantern flames up into blue and green flickers in the globes; they lighted the priest’s face as he took off his hat and laid it beside him, and lighted the switchman’s eyes looking steadily up from the rail. The snow, curling and eddying across the little blaze of lamps, whitened everything alike, tender and wheel and rail, the jackscrews, the bars, and the shoulders and caps of the men. The priest bent forward again and touched the lips and the forehead of the switchman with his thumb: then straightening on his knees he paused a moment, his eyes lifted up, raised his hand and slowly signing through the blinding flakes the form of the cross, gave him the sacrament of the dying.
“I have forgotten the man’s name. I have never seen the old priest, before or since. But, sometime, a painter will turn to the railroad life. When he does, I may see from his hand such a picture as I saw at that moment—the night, the storm, the scant hair of the priest blown in the gale, the men bared about him; the hush of the death moment; the wrinkled hand raised in the last benediction.”
CHAPTER V
AN EMERGENCY CALL
In the morning the Brock special bathed in sunshine lay in the Bear Dance yard. When it was learned at breakfast that during the night Morris Blood had disappeared there was a protest. He had taken a train east, Glover told them.
“But you should not have let him run away,” objected Marie Brock, “we’ve barely made his acquaintance. I was going to ask him ever so many questions about mines this morning. Tell him, Mr. Glover, when you telegraph, that he has had a peremptory recall, will you? We want him for dinner to-morrow night; papa and Mr. Bucks are to join us, you know.”
Mr. Brock arrived the following evening but the general manager failed them, and it was long after hope of Morris Blood had been given up that Glover brought him in with apologies for his late arrival.
The two cars were sidetracked at Cascade, the heart of the sightseeing country, and Glover had a trip laid out for the early morning on horses up Cabin Creek.
When he sat down to explain to Marie where he meant to take the party the following day Gertrude Brock had a book under the banquet lamp at the lower end of the car. The doctor and Harrison with Mrs. Whitney were gathered about Louise, who among the couch pillows was reading hands. As Morris Blood, after some talk with Mr. Brock, approached, Louise nodded to him. “We shall take no apologies for spoiling our dinner party,” said she, “but you may sit down. I haven’t been able, Mr. Blood, to get your story out of my head since you told it: none of us have. Do you believe in palmistry? Now, Mr. Harrison, do sit still till I finish your hand. Oh, here’s another engagement in it! Why, Allen Harrison!”
“How many is that?” asked Gertrude, looking over.
“Three; and here is further excitement for you, Mr. Harrison—”
“How soon?” demanded Allen.
“Very soon, I should think; just as soon as you get home.”
“Well timed,” said Marie; she and Glover had come up. “I think that’s all, this time,” concluded Louise, studying the lines carefully. “Go slow on mining for one year, remember.” She looked at Morris Blood. “Am I to have the pleasure of reading your hand?”
“There isn’t a bit of excitement in my hand, Miss Donner, no fortunes, no adventures, no engagements—”
“You mean in your life. Very good; that’s just the sort of hand I love to read. The excitement is all ahead. Really I should like to read your hand.”
“If you insist,” he said, putting out his left hand.
“Your right, please,” smiled Louise.
“I have no right,” he answered. She looked mystified, but held out her hand smilingly for his right.
“I have no right hand,” he repeated, smiling, too.
None had observed before that the superintendent never offered his hand in greeting. A conscious instant fell on the group. It was barely an instant, for Glover, who heard, turned at once from an answer to Marie Brock and laying a hand on his companion’s shoulder spoke easily to Louise. “He gave his right hand for me once, Miss Donner, that’s the reason he has none. May I offer mine for him?”
He put out his own right hand as he asked, and his lightly serious words bridged the momentary embarrassment.
“Oh, I can read either hand,” laughed Louise, recovering and putting Glover’s hand aside. “Let me have your left, Mr. Blood—your turn presently, Mr. Glover. Be seated. Now this is the sort of hand I like,” she declared, leaning forward as she looked into the left—“full of romance, Mr. Blood. Here is an affair of the heart the very first thing. Now don’t laugh, this is serious.” She studied the palm a moment and glanced mischievously around her. “If I were to disclose all the delicate romances I find here,” she declared with an air of mystery, “they would laugh at both of us. I’m not going to give them a chance. I give private readings, too, Mr. Blood, and you shall have a private reading at the other end or the car after a while. Now is there another ‘party’? Oh, to be sure; come, Mr. Glover, are all railroad men romantic? This is growing interesting—let me see your palm. Oh!”
“Now what have I done?” asked Glover as Louise, studying his palm, started. “I have changed my name—I admit that; but I have always denied killing anyone in the States. Are you going to tell the real facts? Won’t someone lend me a hand for a few minutes? Or may I withdraw this entry before exposure?”
“Mr. Glover! of all the hands! I’m not surprised you were chosen to show the sights. There’s something happening in your hand every few minutes. Adventure
s, heart affairs, fortunes, perils—such a life-line, Mr. Glover. On my word there you are hanging by a hair—a hair—on the verge of eternity—”
Glover laughed softly.
“Oh, come, Louise,” protested Mrs. Whitney. “Touch on lighter lines, please.”
“Lighter lines! Why, Mr. Glover’s heart-line is a perfect cañon.” The laughter did not daunt her. “A perfect cañon. I’ve read about hands like this, but I never saw one. No more to-night, Mr. Glover, you are too exciting.”
“But about hanging on the verge—has it anything to do with a lynching, do you think, Miss Donner?” asked Glover. “The hair rope might be a lariat—”
“Mr. Glover!”—the train conductor opened the car door. “Is Mr. Glover in this car?”
“Yes.”
“A message.”
“May I be excused for a moment?” said Glover, rising.
“What did I tell you?” exclaimed Louise, “a telegram! Something has happened already.”
CHAPTER VI
THE CAT AND THE RAT
At five o’clock that evening, snow was falling at Medicine Bend, but Callahan, as he studied the weather bulletins, found consolation in the fact that it was not raining, and resting his heels on a table littered with train-sheets he forced the draft on a shabby brier and meditated.
There were times when snow had been received with strong words at the Wickiup: but when summer fairly opened Callahan preferred snow to rain as strongly as he preferred genuine Lone Jack to the spurious compounds that flooded the Western market.
The chief element of speculation in his evening reflections was as to what was going on west of the range, for Callahan knew through cloudy experience that what happens on one side of a mountain chain is no evidence as to what is doing on the other—and by species of warm weather depravity that night something was happening west of the range.