by Zane Grey
“Who sent you with this note?”
“I can’t tell. He gave me a dollar and told me I wasn’t to answer any questions.”
“Oh, did he? What else did he tell you?”
“He said for me to take my hat off when I spoke to you, but my hat blowed off when you spoke to me.”
“Unfortunate! Well, you are a handsome fellow, Gloomy. What do you do?”
“I’m a railroad man.”
“Are you? How fine. So you won’t tell who sent you.”
“No, ma’am.”
“What else did the gentleman say?”
“He said if anybody offered me anything I wasn’t to take anything.”
“Did he, indeed, Gloomy?”
“Yes’m.”
She turned to the table from where she was sitting and took up a big box. “No money, he meant.”
“Yes’m.”
“How about candy?”
Solomon shifted.
“He didn’t mention candy?”
“No’m.”
“Do you ever eat candy?”
“Yes’m.”
“This is a box that came from Pittsburg only this morning for me. Take some chocolates. Don’t be afraid; take several. What is your last name?”
“Battershawl.”
“Gloomy Battershawl; how pretty. Battershawl is so euphonious.”
“Yes’m.”
“Who is your best friend among the railroad men?”
“Mr. Duffy, our chief despatcher. I owe my promotion to ’im,” said Solomon, solemnly.
“But who gives you the most money, I mean. Take a large piece this time.”
“Oh, there ain’t anybody gives me any money, much, exceptin’ Mr. Glover. I run errands for him.”
“What is the most money he ever gave you for an errand, Gloomy?”
“Dollar, twice.”
“So much as that?”
“Yes’m.”
“What was that for?”
“The first time it was for taking his washing down to the Spider to him on Number Two one Sunday morning.”
This being a line of answer Gertrude had not expected to develop she started, but Solomon was under way. “Gee, the river w’s high that time. He was down there two weeks and never went to bed at all, and came up special in a sleeper, sick, and I took care of him. Gee, he was sick.”
“What was the matter?”
“Noomonia, the doctor said.”
“And you took care of him!”
“Me an’ the doctor.”
“What was the other errand he gave you a dollar for?”
“Dassent tell.”
“How did you know it was I you should give your note to?”
“He told me it was for the brown-haired young lady that walked so straight—I knew you all right—I seen you on horseback. I guess I’ll have to be going ’cause I got a lot of telegrams to deliver up town.”
“No hurry about them, is there?”
“No, but’s getting near dinner time. Good-by.”
“Wait. Take this box of candy with you.”
Solomon staggered. “The whole box?”
“Certainly.”
“Gee!”
He slid over the rail with the candy under his arm.
When he disappeared, Gertrude went back to her stateroom, closed the door, though quite alone in the car, and re-read her note.
“I have no right to keep this after you leave; perhaps I had no right to keep it at all. But in returning it to you I surely may thank you for the impulse that made you throw it over me the morning I lay asleep behind the Spider dike.”
It was he, then, lying in the rain, ill then, perhaps—nursed by the nondescript cub that had just left her.
The Newmarket lay across the berth—a long, graceful garment. She had always liked the coat, and her eye fell now upon it critically, wondering what he thought of the garment upon making so unexpected an acquaintance with her intimate belongings. Near the bottom of the lining she saw a mud stain on the silk and the pretty fawn melton was spotted with rain. She folded it up before the horseback party returned and put it away, stained and spotted, at the bottom of her trunk.
CHAPTER XI
IN THE LALLA ROOKH
The car in itself was in no way remarkable. A twelve-section and drawing-room, mahogany-finish, wide-vestibule sleeper, done in cream brown, hangings shading into Indian reds—a type of the Pullman car so popular some years ago for transcontinental travel; neither too heavy for the mountains nor too light for the pace across the plains.
There were many features added to the passenger schedule on the West End the year Henry S. Brock and his friends took hold of the road, but none made more stir than the new Number One, run then as a crack passenger train, a strictly limited, vestibuled string, with barbers, baths, grill rooms, and five-o’clock tea. In and out Number One was the finest train that crossed the Rockies, and bar nobody’s.
It was October, with the Colorado travel almost entirely eastbound and the California travel beginning, westbound, and the Lalla Rookh sleeper being deadheaded to the coast on a special charter for an O. and O. steamer party; at least, that was all the porter knew about its destination, and he knew more than anyone else.
At McCloud, where the St. Louis connection is made, Number One sets out a diner and picks up a Portland sleeper—so it happened that the Lalla Rookh, hind car to McCloud, afterward lay ahead of the St. Louis car, and the trainmen passed, as occasion required, through it—lighted down the gloomy aisle by a single Pintsch burner, choked to an all-night dimness.
But on the night of October 3d, which was a sloppy night in the mountains, there was not a great deal to take anybody back through the Lalla Rookh. Even the porter of the dead car deserted his official corpse, and after Number One pulled out of Medicine Bend and stuck her slim, aristocratic nose fairly into the big ranges the Lalla Rookh was left as dead as a stringer to herself and her reflections—reflections of brilliant aisles and staterooms inviting with softened lights, shed on couples that resented intrusion; of sections bright with lovely faces and decks ringing with talk and laughter; of ventilators singing of sunshine within, and of night and stars and waste without—for the Lalla Rookh carried only the best people, and after the overland voyage on her tempered springs and her yielding cushions they felt an affection for her. When the Lalla Rookh lived she lived; but to-night she was dead.
This night the pretty car sped over the range a Cinderella deserted, her linen stored and checked in her closets, her pillows bunked in her seats, and her curtains folded in her uppers, save and except in one single instance—Section Eleven, to conform to certain deeply held ideas of the porter, Raz Brown, as to what might and might not constitute a hoodoo, was made up. Raz Brown did not play much: he could not and hold his job; but when he did play he played eleven always whether it fell between seven, twenty-seven, or four, forty-four. And whenever Raz Brown deadheaded a car through, he always made up section eleven, and laid the hoodoo struggling but helpless under the chilly linen sheets of the lower berth.
Glover had spent the day without incident or excitement on the Wind River branches, and the evening had gone, while waiting to take a train west to Medicine Bend, in figuring estimates at the agent’s desk in Wind River station. He was working night and day to finish the report that the new board was waiting for on the rebuilding of the system.
At midnight when he boarded the train he made his way back to look for a place to stretch out until two o’clock.
The Pullman conductor lay in the smoking-room of the head ’Frisco car dreaming of his salary—too light to make any impression on him except when asleep. It seemed a pity to disturb an honest man’s dreams, and the engineer passed on. In the smok
ing-room of the next car lay a porter asleep. Glover dropped his bag into a chair and took off his coat. While he was washing his hands the train-conductor, Billy O’Brien, came in and set down his lantern. Conductor O’Brien was very much awake and inclined rather to talk over a Mexican mining proposition on which he wanted expert judgment than to let Glover get to bed. When the sleepy man looked at his watch for the fifth time, the conductor was getting his wind for the dog-watch and promised to talk till daylight.
“My boy, I’ve got to go to bed,” declared Glover.
“Every sleeper is loaded to the decks,” returned O’Brien. “This is the most comfortable place you’ll find.”
“No, I’ll go forward into the chair-car,” replied Glover. “Good-night.”
“Stop, Mr. Glover; if you’re bound to go, the Lalla Rookh car right behind this is dead, but there’s steam on. Go into the stateroom and throw yourself on the couch. This is the porter here asleep.”
“William, your advice is good. I’ve taken it too long to disregard it now,” said Glover, picking up his bag. “Good-night.”
But it was not a good night; it was a bad night, and getting worse as Number One dipped into it. Out of the northwest it smoked a ragged, wet fog down the pass, and, as they climbed higher, a bitter song from the Teton way heeled the sleepers over the hanging curves and streamed like sobs through the meshed ventilators of the Lalla Rookh. It was a nasty night for any sort of a sleeper; for a dead one it was very bad.
Glover walked into the Lalla Rookh vestibule, around the smoking-room passage, and into the main aisle of the car, dimly lighted at the hind end. He made his way to the stateroom. The open door gave him light, and he took off his storm-coat, pulled it over him for a blanket, and had closed his eyes when he reflected he had forgotten to warn O’Brien he must get off at Medicine Bend.
It was unpleasant, but forward he went again to avoid the annoyance of being carried by. He could tell as he came back, by the swing, that they were heading the Peace River curves, for the trucks were hitting the elevations like punching-bags. Just as he regained the main aisle of the Lalla Rookh, a lurch of the car plumped him against a section-head. He grasped it an instant to steady himself, and as he stopped he looked. Whether it was that his eyes fell on the curtained section swaying under the Pintsch light ahead—Section Eleven made up—or whether his eyes were drawn to it, who can tell? A woman’s head was visible between the curtains. Glover stood perfectly still and stared. Without right or reason, there certainly stood a woman.
With nobody whatever having any business in the car, a car out of service, carried as one carries a locked and empty satchel—yet the curtains of Section Eleven, next his stateroom, were parted slightly, and the half-light from above streamed on a woman’s loose hair. She was not looking toward where he stood; her face was turned from him, and as she clasped the curtain she was looking into his stateroom. What the deuce! thought Glover. A woman passenger in a dead sleeper? He balanced himself to the dizzy wheel of the truck under him, and waited for her to look his way—since she must be looking for the porter—but the head did not move. The curtains swayed with the jerking of the car, but the woman in Eleven looked intently into the dark stateroom. What did it mean? Glover determined a shock.
“Tickets!” he exclaimed, sternly—and stood alone in the car.
“Tickets!” The head was gone; not alone that, strangely gone. How? Glover could not have told. It was gone. The Pintsch burned dim; the Teton song crooned through the ventilators; the wheels of the Lalla Rookh struck muffled at the fish-plates; the curtains of Section Eleven swung slowly in and out of the berth—but the head was not there.
A creepy feeling touched his back; his first impulse was to ignore the incident, go into the stateroom and lie down. Then he thought he might have alarmed the passenger in Eleven when he had first entered. Yet there was, officially at least, no passenger in Eleven; plainly there was nothing to do but to call the conductor. He went forward. O’Brien was sorting his collections in the smoking-room of the next car. Raz Brown, awake—nominally, at least—sat by, reading his dream-book.
“Is this the Lalla Rookh porter?” asked Glover. O’Brien nodded.
“Who’s your passenger in Eleven back there?” demanded Glover, turning to the darky.
“Me?” stammered Raz Brown.
“Who’s your fare in Eleven in Lalla Rookh?”
“My fare? Why, I ain’t got nair a fare in Lalla Rookh. She’s dead, boss.”
“You’ve got a woman passenger in Eleven. What are you talking about? What’s the matter with you?”
Raz Brown’s eyes rolled marvellously. “’Fore God, dere ain’t nobody dere ez I knows on, Mr. O’Brien,” protested the surprised porter, getting up.
“There’s a woman in Eleven, Billy,” said Glover.
“Come on,” exclaimed O’Brien, turning to the porter. “She may be a spotter. Let’s see.”
Raz Brown walked back reluctantly, Conductor O’Brien leading. Into the Lalla Rookh, dark and quiet, around the smoking-room, down the aisle, and facing Eleven; there the Pintsch light dimly burned, the draperies slowly swayed in front of the darkened berth. Raz Brown gripped the curtains preliminarily.
“Tickets, ma’am.” There was a heavy pause.
“Tickets!” No response.
“C’nduct’h wants youh tickets, ma’am.”
The silence could be cut with an axe. Raz Brown parted the curtains, peered in, opened them wider, peered farther in; pushed the curtains back with both hands. The berth was empty.
Raz looked at Conductor O’Brien. O’Brien grasped the curtains himself. The upper berth hung closed above. The lower, made up, lay untouched—the pillows fresh, the linen sheets folded back, Pullmanwise, over the dark blanket.
The porter looked at Glover. “See foh y’se’f.”
Glover was impatient. “She’s somewhere about the car,” he exclaimed, “search it.” Raz Brown went through the Lalla Rookh from vestibule to vestibule: it was as empty as a ceiling.
Puzzled and annoyed, Glover stood trying to recall the mysterious appearance. He walked back to where he had seen the woman, stood where he had stood and looked where he had looked. She had not seemed to withdraw, as he recalled: the curtains had not closed before the head; it had vanished. The wind sung fine, very fine through the copper screens, the Pintsch light flowed very low into the bright globe, the curtains swung again gracefully to the dip of the car; but the head was gone.
A discussion threw no light on the mystery. On one point, however, Conductor O’Brien was firm. While the conductor and the porter kept up the talk, Glover resumed his preparations for retiring in the stateroom, but O’Brien interfered.
“Don’t do it. Don’t you do it. I wouldn’t sleep in that room now for a thousand dollars.”
“Nonsense.”
“That’s all right. I say come forward.”
They made him up a corner in the smoking-room of the ’Frisco car, and he could have slept like a baby had not the conviction suddenly come upon him that he had seen Gertrude Brock. Should he, after all, see her again? And what did it mean? Why was she looking in terror into his stateroom?
CHAPTER XII
A SLIP ON A SPECIAL
Glover’s train pulled into Medicine Bend, in the rain, at half-past two o’clock. The face in the Lalla Rookh had put an end to thoughts of sleep, and he walked up to his office in the Wickiup to work until morning on his report. He lighted a lamp, opened his desk with a clang that echoed to the last dark corner of the zigzag hall, and, spreading out his papers, resumed the figuring he had begun at Wind River station. But the combinations which at eleven o’clock had gone fast refused now to work. The Lalla Rookh curtains intruded continually into his problems and his calculations dissolved helplessly into an idle stare at a jumble of figures.
He got up at last, restless, walked through the trainmaster’s room, into the despatcher’s office, and stumbled on the tragedy of the night.
It came about through an ambition in itself honorable—the ambition of Bud Cawkins to become a train-despatcher.
Bud began railroading on the Wind River. In three months he was made an agent, in six months he had become an expert in station work, an operator after a despatcher’s own heart, and the life of the line; then he began looking for trouble. His quest resulted first in the conviction that the main line business was not handled nearly as well as it ought to be. Had Bud confided this to an agent of experience there would have been no difficulty. He would have been told that every agent on every branch in the world, sooner or later, has the same conviction; that he need only to let it alone, eat sparingly of brain food, and the clot would be sure to pass unnoticed.
Unfortunately, Bud concealed his conviction, and asked Morris Blood to give him a chance at the Wickiup. The first time, Morris Blood only growled; the second time he looked at the handsome boy disapprovingly.
“Want to be a despatcher, do you? What’s the matter with you? Been reading railroad stories? I’ll fire any man on my division that reads railroad stories. Don’t be a chump. You’re in line now for the best station on the division.”
But compliments only fanned Bud’s flame, and Morris Blood, after reasonable effort to save the boy’s life, turned him over to Martin Duffy.
Now, of all severe men on the West End, Duffy is most biting. His smile is sickly, his hair dry, and his laugh soft.
“Despatcher, eh? Ha, ha, ha; I see, Bud. Coming down to show us how to do business. Oh, no. I understand; that is all right. It is what brought me here, Bud, when I was about your age and good for something. Well, it is a snap. There is nothing in the railroad life equal to a despatcher’s trick. If you should make a mistake and get two trains together they will only fire you. If you happen to kill a few people they can’t make anything more than manslaughter out of it—I know that because I’ve seen them try to hang a despatcher for a passenger wreck—they can’t do it, Bud, don’t ever believe it. In this state ten years is the extreme limit for manslaughter, and the only complication is that if your train should happen to burn up they might soak you an extra ten years for arson; but a despatcher is usually handy around a penitentiary and can get light work in the office, so that he’s thrown more with wife poisoners and embezzlers than with cutthroats and hold-up men. Then, too, you can earn nearly as much in State’s prison as you can at your trick. A despatcher’s salary is high, you know—seventy-five, eighty, and even a hundred dollars a month.
