The Western Romance MEGAPACK ®: 20 Classic Tales

by Zane Grey

  Glover emerged from his hall-office in great spirits and showed the letter to Callahan, the general superintendent, for congratulations. “That is right,” commented Callahan cynically. “You saved them a hundred thousand dollars last month—they are going to blow ten a week on you. By the way, your stenographer is here.”

  “He is?”

  “She is. Your stenographer, a very dignified young lady, came in on Number One. You had better go and get shaved. She has been in to inquire for you and has gone to look up a boarding-place. Get her started as soon as you can—I want to see your figures on the Rat Cañon work.”

  A helper now would be a boon from heaven. “But she won’t stay long after she sees this office,” Glover reflected ruefully as he returned to it. He knew from experience that stenographers were hard to hold at Medicine Bend. They usually came out for their health and left at the slightest symptoms of improvement. He worried as to whether he might possibly have been unlucky enough to draw another invalid. And at the very moment he had determined he would not lose his new assistant if good treatment would keep her he saw a trainman far down the gloomy hall pointing a finger in his direction—saw a young lady coming toward him and realized he ought to have taken time that morning to get shaved.

  There was nothing to do but make the best of it; dismissing his embarrassment he rose to greet the newcomer. His first reflection was that he had not drawn an invalid, for he had never seen a fresher face in his life, and her bearing had the confidence of health itself.

  “I heard you had been here,” he said reassuringly as the young lady hesitated at his door.

  “Pardon me?”

  “I heard you had been here,” he repeated with deference.

  “I wish to send a despatch,” she replied with an odd intonation. Her reply seemed so at variance with his greeting that a chill tempered his enthusiasm. Could they possibly have sent him a deaf stenographer?—one worn in the exacting service at headquarters? There was always a fly somewhere in his ointment, and so capable and engaging a young lady seemed really too good to be true. He saw the message blank in her hand. “Let me take it,” he suggested, and added, raising his voice, “It shall go at once.” The young lady gave him the message and sitting down at his desk he pressed an electric call. Whatever her misfortunes she enlisted his sympathy instantly, and as no one had ever accused him of having a weak voice he determined he would make the best of the situation. “Be seated, please,” he said. She looked at him curiously. “Pray, be seated,” he repeated more firmly.

  “I desire only to pay for my telegram.”

  “Not at all. It isn’t necessary. Just be seated!”

  In some bewilderment she sat down on the edge of the chair beside which she stood.

  “We are cramped for room at present in the construction department,” he went on, affixing his frank to the telegram. “Here, Gloomy, rush this, my boy,” said he to the messenger, who came through a door connecting with the operator’s room. “But we have the promise of more space soon,” he resumed, addressing the young lady hopefully. “I have had your desk placed there to give you the benefit of the south light.”

  The stenographer studied the superintendent of construction with some surprise. His determination to provide for her comfort was most apparent and his apologies for his crowded quarters were so sincere that they could not but appeal to a stranger. Her expression changed. Glover felt that he ought to ask her to take off her hat, but could not for his life. The frankness of her eyes was rather too confusing to support very much of at once, and he busied himself at sorting the blueprints on his table, guiltily aware that she was alive to his unshaven condition. He endeavored to lead the conversation. “We have excellent prospects of a new headquarters building.” As he spoke he looked up. Her eyes were certainly extraordinary. Could she be laughing at him? The prospect of a new building had been, it was true, a joke for many years and evidently she put no more confidence in the statement than he did himself. “Of course, you are aware,” he continued to bolster his assertion, “that the road has been bought by an immensely rich lot of Pittsburg duffers—”

  The stenographer half rose in her chair. “Will it not be possible for me to pay for my message at once?” she asked somewhat peremptorily.

  “I have already franked it.”

  “But I did not—”

  “Don’t mention it. All I will ask in return is that you will help me get some letters out of the way to-day,” returned Glover, laying a pencil and note-book on the desk before her. “The other work may go till to-morrow. By the way, have you found a boarding-place?”

  “A boarding-place?”

  “I understand you were looking for one.”

  “I have one.”

  “The first letter is to Mr. Bucks—I fancy you know his address—” She did not begin with alacrity. Their eyes met, and in hers there was a queerish expression.

  “I’m not at all sure I ought to undertake this,” she said rapidly and with a touch of disdainful mischief.

  “Give yourself no uneasiness—” he began.

  “It is you I fear who are giving yourself uneasiness,” she interrupted.

  “No, I dictate very slowly. Let’s make a trial anyway.” To avoid embarrassment he looked the other way when he saw she had taken up the pencil.

  “My Dear Bucks,” he began. “Your letter with programme for the Pittsburg party is received. Why am I to be nailed to the cross with part of the entertaining? There’s no hunting now. The hair is falling off grizzlies and Goff wouldn’t take his dogs out at this season for the President of the United States. What would you think of detailing Paddy McGraw to give the young men a fast ride—they have heard of him. I talked yesterday with one of them. He wanted to see a train robber and I introduced him to Conductor O’Brien, but he never saw the joke, and you know how depressing explanations are. Don’t, my dear Bucks, put me on a private car with these people for four weeks—my brother died of paresis—”

  “Oh!” He turned. The stenographer’s cheeks were burning; she was astonishingly pretty. “I’m going too fast, I’m afraid,” said Glover.

  “I do not think I had better attempt to continue,” she answered, rising. Her eyes fairly burned the brown mountain engineer.

  “As you like,” he replied, rising too, “It was hardly fair to ask you to work to-day. By the way, Mr. Bucks forgot to give me your name.”

  “Is it necessary that you should have my name?”

  “Not in the least,” returned Glover with insistent consideration, “any name at all will do, so I shall know what to call you.”

  For an instant she seemed unable to catch her breath, and he was about to explain that the rarefied air often affected newcomers in that way when she answered with some intensity, “I am Miss Brock. I never have occasion to use any other name.”

  Whatever result she looked for from her spirited words, his manner lost none of its urbanity. “Indeed? That’s the name of our Pittsburg magnate. You ought to be sure of a position under him—you might turn out to be a relation,” he laughed, softly.

  “Quite possibly.”

  “Do not return this afternoon,” he continued as she backed away from him. “This mountain air is exhausting at first—”

  “Your letters?” she queried with an expression that approached pleasant irony.

  “They may wait.”

  She courtesied quaintly. He had never seen such a woman in his life, and as his eyes fixed on her down the dim hall he was overpowered by the grace of her vanishing figure.

  Sitting at his table he was still thinking of her when Solomon, the messenger, came in with a telegram. The boy sat down opposite the engineer, while the latter read the message.

  “That Miss Brock is fine, isn’t she?”

  Glover scowled. “I took a despatch o
ver to the car yesterday and she gave me a dollar,” continued Solomon.

  “What car?”

  “Her car. She’s in that Pittsburg party.”

  “The young lady that sat here a moment ago?”

  “Sure; didn’t you know? There she goes now to the car again.” Glover stepped to the east window. A young lady was gathering up her gown to mount the car-step and a porter was assisting her. The daintiness of her manner was a nightmare of conviction. Glover turned from the window and began tearing up papers on his table. He tore up all the worthless papers in sight and for months afterward missed valuable ones. When he had filled the waste-basket he rammed blue-prints down into it with his foot until he succeeded in smashing it. Then he sat down and held his head between his hands.

  She was entitled to an apology, or an attempt at one at least, and though he would rather have faced a Sweetgrass blizzard than an interview he set his lips and with bitterness in his heart made his preparations. The incident only renewed his confidence in his incredible stupidity, but what he felt was that a girl with such eyes as hers could never be brought to believe it genuine.

  An hour afterward he knocked at the door of the long olive car that stood east of the station. The hand-rails were very bright and the large plate windows shone spotless, but the brown shades inside were drawn. Glover touched the call-button and to the uniformed colored man who answered he gave his card asking for Miss Brock.

  An instant during which he had once waited for a dynamite blast when unable to get safely away, came back to him. Standing on the handsome platform he remembered wondering at that time whether he should land in one place or in several places. Now, he wished himself away from that door even if he had to crouch again on the ledge which he had found in a deadly moment he could not escape from. On the previous occasion the fuse had mercifully failed to burn. This time when he collected his thoughts the colored man was smilingly telling him for the second time that Miss Brock was not in.

  CHAPTER III

  INTO THE MOUNTAINS

  “You put me in an awkward position,” muttered Bucks, looking out of the window.

  “But it is grace itself compared with the position I should be in now among the Pittsburgers,” objected Glover, shifting his legs again.

  “If you won’t go, I must, that’s all,” continued the general manager. “I can’t send Tom, Dick, or Harry with these people, Ab. Gentlemen must be entertained as such. On the hunting do the best you can; they want chiefly to see the country and I can’t have them put through it on a tourist basis. I want them to see things globe-trotters don’t see and can’t see without someone like you. You ought to do that much for our President—Henry S. Brock is not only a national man, and a big one in the new railroad game, but besides being the owner of this whole system he is my best friend. We sat at telegraph keys together a long time before he was rated at sixty million dollars. I care nothing for the party except that it includes his own family and is made up of his friends and associates and he looks to me here as I should look to him in the East were circumstances reversed.”

  Bucks paused. Glover stared a moment. “If you put it in that way let us drop it,” said he at last. “I will go.”

  “The blunder was not a life and death matter. In the mountains where we don’t see one woman a year it might happen that any man expecting one young lady should mistake another for her. Miss Brock is full of mischief, and the temptation to her to let you deceive yourself was too great, that’s all. If I could go without sacrificing the interests of all of us in the reorganization I shouldn’t ask you to go.”

  “Let it pass.”

  The day had been planned for the little reception to the visitors. The arrival of two more private cars had added the directors, the hunting party and more women to the company. The women were to drive during the day, and the men had arranged to inspect the roundhouse, the shops, and the division terminals and to meet the heads of the operating department.

  In the evening the railroad men were to call on their guests at the train. This was what Glover had hoped he should escape until Bucks arriving in the morning asked him not only to attend the reception but to pilot Mr. Brock’s own party through a long mountain trip. To consent to the former request after agreeing to the latter was of slight consequence.

  In the evening the special train twinkling across the yard looked as pretty as a dream. The luxury of the appointments, subdued by softened lights, and the simple hospitality of the Pittsburgers—those people who understand so well how to charm and bow to repel—was a new note to the mountain men. If self-consciousness was felt by the least of them at the door it could hardly pass Mr. Brock within; his cordiality was genuine.

  Following Bucks came some of his mountain staff, whom he introduced to the men whose interests they now represented. Morris Blood, the superintendent, was among those he brought forward, and he presented him as a young railroad man and a rising one. Glover followed because he was never very far from the mountain superintendent and the general manager when the two were in sight.

  For Glover there was an uncomfortable moment prospect, and it came almost at once. Mr. Brock, in meeting him as the chief of construction who was to take the party on the mountain trip, left his place and took him with Blood black to his own car to be introduced to his sister, Mrs. Whitney. The younger Miss Brock, Marie, the invalid, a sweet-faced girl, rose to meet the two men. Mrs. Whitney introduced them to Miss Donner. At the table Gertrude Brock was watching a waiter from the dining-car who was placing a coffee urn.

  She turned to meet the young men that were coming forward with her father, and Glover thought the awful moment was upon him; yet it happened that he was never to be introduced to Gertrude Brock.

  Marie was already engaging him where he stood with gentle questions, and to catch them he had to bend above her. When the waiter went away, Morris Blood was helping Gertrude Brock to complete her arrangements. Others came up; the moment passed. But Glover was conscious all the time of this graceful girl who was so frankly cordial to those near her and so oblivious of him.

  He heard her laughing voice in her conversation with his friends and noted in the utterance of her sister and her aunt the same unusual inflections that he had first heard from her in his office. To his surprise these Eastern women were very easy to talk to. They asked about the mountains, and as their train conductor had long ago hinted when himself apologizing for mountain stories, well told but told at second hand—Glover knew the mountains.

  Discussing afterward the man that was to plan the summer trip for them, Louise Donner wished it might have been the superintendent, because he was a Boston Tech man.

  “Oh, but I think Mr. Glover is going to be interesting,” declared Mrs. Whitney. “He drawls and I like that sort of men; there’s always something more to what they say, after you think they’re done, don’t you know? He drank two cups of coffee, didn’t he, Gertrude? Didn’t you like him?”

  “The tall one? I didn’t notice; he is amazingly homely, isn’t he?”

  “Don’t abuse him, for he is delightful,” interposed Marie.

  “I accused him right soon of being a Southerner,” Mrs. Whitney went on. “He admitted he was a Missourian. When I confessed I liked his drawl he told me I ought to hear his brother, a lawyer, who stutters. Mr. Glover says he wins all his cases through sympathy. He stumbles along until everyone is absolutely convinced that the poor fellow would have a perfectly splendid case if he could only stammer through it; then, of course, he gets the verdict.”

  The party had not completed the first day out of Medicine Bend under Glover’s care before they realized that Mrs. Whitney was right. Glover could talk and he could listen. With the men it was mining or railroading or shooting. If things lagged with the ladies he had landmarks or scenery or early-day stories. With Mrs. Whitney he could in extremity discuss St. Louis. Marie Brock
he could please by placing her in marvellous spots for sketching. As for Gertrude and Louise Donner the men of their own party left them no dull moments.

  The first week took the party north into the park country. Two days of the time, on horses, partly, put everyone in love with the Rockies. On Saturday they reached the main line again, and at Sleepy Cat, Superintendent Blood joined the party for the desert run to the Heart Mountains. Glover already felt the fatigue of the unusual week, nor could any ingenuity make the desert interesting to strenuous people. Its beauties are contemplative rather than pungent, and the travellers were frankly advised to fall back on books and ping-pong. Crawling across an interminable alkali basin in the late afternoon their train was laid out a long time by a freight wreck.

  Weary of the car, Gertrude Brock, after the sun had declined, was walking alone down the track when Glover came in sight. She started for the train, but Glover easily overtook her. Since he had joined the party they had not exchanged one word.

  “I wonder whether you have ever seen anything like these, Miss Brock?” he asked, coming up to her. She turned; he had a handful of small, long-stemmed flowers of an exquisite blue.

  “How beautiful!” she exclaimed, moved by surprise. “What are they?”

  “Desert flowers.”

  “Such a blue.”

  “You expressed a regret this morning—”

  “Oh, you heard—”

  “I overheard—”

  “What are they called?”

  “I haven’t an idea. But once in the Sioux country—” They were at the car-step. “Marie? See here,” she called to her sister within.

  “Won’t you take them?” asked Glover.

  “No, no. I—”

  “With an apology for my—”

  “Marie, dear, do look here—”

  “—Stupidity the other day?”