Chapter IV: Part 4

Thereupon followed a smart quarrel in telegraphic shorthand, in which Denver accused Beaver Brook of going to sleep over his instrument, and Beaver Brook intimated that Denver was intoxicated. All of which gave the obstructionist at Golden a clear minute in which to determine what to do.

"If I only knew what Fred wants to have happen," he mused, "I might be able to fix it up right for him. As I don't, I'll just have to make hash of it--no, I won't, either; I'll just trim it down a bit and make it talk backward--that's the idea! and three words dropped will do it, by jing! Wonder if I can get the switchboard down fine enough to cut them out? Here she comes again."

The quarrel was concluded and Denver began to repeat the message. Brockway's friend bent over his table with his soul in his ears and his finger-tips. Denver was impatient, and the preliminaries chattered through the sounder as one long word. At the final letter in the address, the Golden man's switch-key flicked to the right and then back again; and at the tenth word in the message the movement was repeated.

"O. K.," said Beaver Brook.

"Repeat," clicked Denver.

"No time; train's here," came back from the station in the canyon; and Brockway's friend sat back and chuckled softly.

XX

CHIEFLY SCENIC

When the train drew up to the platform at Beaver Brook, Brockway asked Gertrude if he should go and see if there were a message for her.

"No," she said, perversely; "let it find me, if it can."

It came, a minute later, by the hand of Conductor Halsey. She read it with a little frown of perplexity gathering between the straight brows.

"Do we live or die?" Brockway asked, crucially anxious to know what his friend had been able to do for him.

"Why, I don't understand it at all; it's simply Greek, after the other one. Papa says: 'Do not return on forenoon train. We shall wait for you.'"

"Good; I am a true prophet, and our white day is assured."

"Y--yes, but I don't begin to understand how he came to change his mind so quickly."

"Perhaps it was the moral force of my impudence," ventured Brockway.

"Don't make any such mistake as that," she said, quickly. "Papa will not forgive or forget that, and I am sorry you did it."

"You are a bundle of inconsistencies, as you promised to be," Brockway retorted. "But I'm not sorry, and I don't pretend to be. If I had smothered my little inspiration and given you your telegram at Golden, you wouldn't be enjoying this magnificent scenery now."

"No; and it is grand beyond words, isn't it? If it wasn't for the name of it, I could rave over it like a veritable 'Cooky.' Can't we go out on the platform?"

"Yes; but you'll get your eyes full of cinders."

"I don't care. Let's go, anyway."

They did it and, for a wonder, found the rear platform of the second observation-car unoccupied. Gertrude wanted to sit on the step, but Brockway objected, on the score of danger from the jutting rocks; so they stood together, bracing themselves and clinging to the hand-rails.

"Show me the 'Old Man of the Mountain' when we come to it," she said; "of course, there _is_ an 'Old Man of the Mountain'?"

"There is, indeed, but we passed him long ago--at least, the one that is always pointed out to the 'Cookies' as you call them. But if you will watch the outlines of the cliffs you can find one of your own in any half-mile of the canyon."

"I don't want one if they are as cheap as that. I suppose you have made them at a pinch, haven't you? when you had forgotten to point out the real one?"

"I'm afraid I have; just as I have been obliged to invent statistics. But that is the fault of the man with a note-book; he will have them, you know."

"Why don't you tell him the truth?"

"Because he is too numerous in my calling; and again, because I don't often know enough of the truth to satisfy him."

"But it is wrong to invent things," she protested, dropping her irresponsible role to fight for the love of truth which was her Puritan birthright.

"I agree with you; but ciceronic lying is almost a disease. It's a paragrapher's proverb that railwaymen can't tell the truth, though I think a good many of us try to confine ourselves to the scenic lie. That seems to be almost necessary."

Gertrude did not reply. The bounding, swaying rear platform of a moving train which is reeling off miles and mountain heights of a stupendous natural panorama is not exactly the place for a dispassionate discussion of ethical principles. It hurt her to believe that her companion did not love truth in the abstract, and she meant to have it out with him later; but for the moment she put duty aside and opened the door to enthusiasm.

"Just think!" she exclaimed; "yesterday the horizon was so far away that it was actually invisible; and now you can almost reach out and touch it. Please don't let me miss anything that I ought to see."

"Did anyone show you 'The Mule' when you were up here last year?"

"No."

"It is just around the second curve ahead. Look well up the mountain-side for a big bowlder facing the canyon; it's a picture, not a figure."

She followed his directions, grasping the hand-rails and leaning far out to get a wider view. Brockway wanted to put his arm around her and hold her, but not daring to, stood by to catch her if she should lose her balance. Presently the great bowlder circled into view, and she got a very satisfactory sight of the pictured mule on its face before a sudden swerve of the train swept it out of range.

"How wonderful!" she exclaimed. "How did anyone ever get up there to paint it?"

"It is only a 'water-painting,' as the people up here call it; a natural discoloration on the face of the rock," he answered. "Isn't it life-like, though?"

"Indeed, it is; it is almost incredible." Then, suddenly: "That isn't a scenic fib, is it?"

"No. If you'll agree not to flog me with my own whip, I'll promise to tell you the truth and nothing but the truth, all day."

"Isn't that a very large promise?"

Brockway had a fleeting glimpse into the book of prophecy and saw that it might easily become so. None the less, he would not go back.

"Large or small, I'll keep it to the letter. But now I want to show you something else. Stand right here beside me and watch the outlines of those cliffs on the right; just the outline against the sky, I mean. Follow it steadily and tell me what you see when I give the word."

The train darted around a sharp curve and sped away up one of the few tangents in its tortuous path. "Now!" said Brockway, as the timbers of a culvert roared under the trucks of the observation-car.

"It's the Sphynx!" she said, with a little tremor of awe in her voice; "solemn, and majestic, and grander than anything I ever imagined! And I never even heard of it before. Do people know about it?"

"Not many; and those who do are hardened by familiarity. I have seen it a great many times, but it always gets near to me, just as it did to you."

"I shall never forget it. Please don't show me any more wonders just now. I shall rave like the most foolish 'Cooky' of them all if you do."

"I can't," said Brockway; "I don't know any more." A shrill whistle from the engine cut the sentence short, and Gertrude asked if they were coming to a station.

"Yes, it's Forks Creek, famous for its pies. Everybody eats pie at the Forks. Will you climb down from the heights of the sublime and go and eat pie with me?"

"Anything you say," she rejoined, laughing; and a few minutes later, John Burton the canny was scandalized to see the President's daughter walking up and down the narrow platform with the passenger agent, eating her half of an apple turnover which Brockway had bought and shared with her.

XXI

ON THE HEIGHTS

John Burton was scandalized, and he said as much to his wife when the train was once more on its way up the canyon.

"Emily, there's going to be a fracas when we get back to-night. It's my opinion that the President sent his daughter with us to get her out of Fred's reach."

"Then it serves him right," said Mrs. Burton, complacently. "She is not a child; she's old enough to know her own mind."

"That may be, but it doesn't let us out. I wish you'd go back and sit with them awhile."

"And get myself disliked? No, thank you. I may not shine as a star in the chaperonic firmament, but I'm a human being. Think of it; put yourself in Fred's place, if you haven't hopelessly outlived the possibility, and see how you'd like to be duennaed at such a time."

"It isn't a question of likes and--" but at that moment the truants appeared to speak for themselves.

"It's chilly out there in the open car, and we came in to talk and get warm," said Gertrude. "Did you get any pie, Mrs. Burton?"

"No; Mr. Burton wasn't as thoughtful as Fr--as Mr. Brockway."

"Mr. Brockway was twice thoughtful," laughed Gertrude, as the passenger agent drew a pie from under his coat and proceeded to cut it into quarters with his pocket-knife.

Burton said, "Oh, pshaw!" with deprecatory emphasis, but he accepted his allotment and ate it with the others. Afterward, when the talk took flight into the region of badinage, he went away and devoted himself dutifully to the Tadmorians.

When he was gone, the trio made merry with true holiday zest. For Gertrude, the little plunge into the stream of unconventionality was refreshing and keenly exhilarating, and she bore her part joyously, forgetting the day of reckoning, and seeking only to make the most of the few hours of outlawry.

Brockway, too, drank of the cup of levity, but in his inmost parts he stood amazed with sheer joy in the presence of the real Gertrude--of the woman he loved divested of the mask of conventionality. He had loved her well for what he thought she was, and had been content to set her upon a pedestal to be worshipped from afar as the apotheosis of adorable womanhood. But the light of this later revelation individualized her; ideals and abstractions vanished before her living, breathing personality, and Brockway was made to know that she could never again be to him the mere archetype of lovable woman-kind. She was infinitely more. She was the one woman in all the world whose life might be the complement of his; the other half of the broken talisman; the major and truer portion of a mystic circle of which his being was the other segment.

All of which was doubtless very romantic and unmodern in a sensible young man of Brockway's practical and workaday upbringing; but there are more curious seeds lying dormant in the soil of human nature than the analyst has ever yet classified; and ideality and romanticism are but skin-masked in many a man whose outward presentment is merely the _abc_ of modern realism.

So Brockway beheld and rhapsodized in secret, and laughed and chatted openly, and sank deeper and deeper in the pit of perplexity as the train burrowed its way into the heart of the mountains. For, keeping even pace with the gallop of love, pride rode militant. Life without Gertrude would be but a barren waste, said one; and, better a desert and solitude therein than an Eden envenomed by the serpent of inequality, retorted the other. Which proves that class distinctions are buttressed from below no less securely than they are suspended from above; and that feudalism in the subject has become extinct in one form only to flourish quite vigorously in another.

But these were under-thoughts. In his proper person, the passenger agent was doing his best to keep his promise to Gertrude; to make the day a little oasis of care-free enjoyment in the humdrum desert of commonplace.

At Georgetown, Burton proposed the transfer of the entire party to one of the observation-cars for the better viewing of the Loop, and the thing was done forthwith. But at the last moment Gertrude decided to remain in the coach, and Brockway stayed with her, as a matter of course.

"I've seen it twice, and I don't care to hang over the edge of it," she said. "Besides, it's very comfortable in here; don't you think so?"

"I'm not finding any fault," Brockway rejoined. "I wish we might have the coach to ourselves for the rest of the day."

"Do you? I thought you had been enjoying yourself all along."

"So I have, in a way; but I hate and abhor a crowd--I've had to be the nucleus of too many of them, I suppose."

"What do you call a crowd?" she inquired, laughing at the outburst of vindictiveness.

"Three people--sometimes. Half the pleasure of this forenoon has been slain by the knowledge that we'll have to fight for our dinners with the mob at that wretched little _table d'hote_ at Graymont."

"Can't we escape it?"

"Not without going hungry."

"I think Mr. and Mrs. Burton are going to escape it."

"What makes you think that?"

"This," said Gertrude, pointing to a well-filled lunch-basket under the seat.

"Praised be Allah!" Brockway exclaimed, fervently. "You can trust Burton to look out for the small personal comforts. And he never so much as hinted at this when I was grumbling about the dinner awhile ago. I've a mind to punish him."

"How?"

"By confiscating the basket. We could run away by ourselves and have a quiet little picnic dinner while they wrestle with the mob."

But Gertrude demurred. "That would be too callously villanous," she objected. "Can't we divide with them?"

"And go away by ourselves with the spoils?"

"Yes, if you like."

"I do like. I know a place, and the way to get there. Are you good for a climb?"

Brockway possessed himself of the basket, spread a newspaper on the opposite seat, and began to make a very fair and equitable division of the eatables.

"I'm good for anything," she said; then she pulled off her gloves and helped him divide the luncheon.

When the train stopped at Graymont, Burton went forward to get the luncheon. The coach was empty when he reached it, and the looted basket bore witness to the designs of the two young people. The general agent wagged his head dubiously, and when he had seen the last of the Tadmorians securely wedged into his place at the crowded table in the hotel dining-room, he failed not to lay the burden of gloomy prophecy once more upon the shoulders of the small person who, as he more than half suspected, was responsible for Brockway's presence.

By that time the subjects of the prophecy were well out of sight and hearing in the narrow ravine in which the great canyon has its beginnings. They walked the ties to the end of the track, and beyond that point picked their way over the rough ground until they came to a trail leading up the northern acclivity. Here Brockway took Gertrude's arm and together they began the ascent.

"Don't forget what I told you", he cautioned; "you are not to look back until I give the word."

"Should I turn into a pillar of salt if I did?" she asked.

"Possibly."

"Then I'll not do it; it would be rather awkward for both of us."

A hundred feet or more above the level of the railway track they came to a small plateau, and in the midst of it, Brockway stopped suddenly and spun her around with her face to the southward. No uninspired pen may set down in unmalleable phrase a description of what she saw; nor can any tide-gauge of language, spoken or written, measure the great wave of emotion which swept over her, choking the flood-gates of expression. From the moment the ascending train enters the canyon at Golden until it pauses opposite the hotel at Graymont, the scenery is rugged and inspiring, but it belittles itself by its very nearness. But from the plateau where they were standing, the vista expands as if by magic. The mighty mountain at whose foot the train pauses becomes but a foothill, and just beyond it, in indescribable grandeur and majesty, rises the huge, snow-clad bulk of Gray's Peak, stupendous, awe-inspiring, dazzling the eye with its unspotted mantle of shimmering white, and slaying the sense of proportion with its immeasurable vastness.

Gertrude caught her breath, and Brockway stood uncovered beside her, silent and watchful. When her eyes began to fill with tears, he broke the spell.

"Forgive me," he said, quickly; "it was almost cruel not to prepare you, but I wanted to see if it would appeal to you as it does to me."

"It is unspeakable," she said, softly. "Shall we stop here?"

"No." He took her arm again and together they climbed higher on the mountain-side; silently, as befitted time and place, but each with a heartful of thoughts too large for speech.

XXII

ON THE SPUR-TRACK

At the precise moment when Gertrude and Brockway, pausing in their breath-cutting scramble up the bowlder-strewn mountain-side, were casting about for a suitable place in which to eat their luncheon, President Vennor and his guests were rising from the table after a rather early midday meal in car Naught-fifty. When the ladies had gone to their staterooms, the President sent Quatremain upon a wholly unnecessary errand to the post-office, and drew up a chair to smoke a cigar with Fleetwell.

It was not for nothing that he banished the secretary. The forenoon train from Clear Creek Canyon had arrived without bringing Gertrude; and the wires, which he had waited upon with increasing disquietude, still remained churlishly silent. A crisis in Gertrude's affair seemed imminent, and, as a last resort, Mr. Vennor had resolved to admonish Fleetwell, to the end that the collegian's wooing might be judiciously accelerated.

"I am afraid you have been lukewarm with Gertrude once too often, Chester, my boy," he began, with studied bluntness. "You ought by all means to have gone up in the mountains with her to-day."

Fleetwell tried to look properly aggrieved, and succeeded fairly well. "That's rather hard on me, isn't it? when I didn't so much as know she was going?"

"That is precisely the point I wished to arrive at," the President asserted, blandly. "You should have known. You can scarcely expect her to thrust her confidence upon you."

In his way, Fleetwell could be quite as plain-spoken as his hard-eyed cousin, and he answered the President's implication without pretending to misunderstand it.

"You mean that I've been shirking; that I haven't been properly reading my lines in the little comedy planned by my grandfather; is that it?"

"Well, not exactly shirking, perhaps, but the most observant person would never suspect that you and Gertrude were anything more than civilly tolerant cousins. I know her better than you do, my boy, and I can assure you that she's not to be so lightly won. Ours is a fairly practical family. I think I may say, but there is a streak of romance in it which comes to the surface now and then in the women, and Gertrude has her full share of it. Moreover, she doesn't care a pin for the provisions of the will."

"Confound the will!" said the collegian. "I don't see why the old gentleman had to fall back on a medieval dodge that always defeats itself."

"Nor I; the matter would have been very much simplified if he had not. But, unfortunately, we have to do with the fact."

"It strikes me that we've had to do with it all along. I used to think Gertrude was rather fond of me, but since this money affair has come up, I'm not so sure of it."

"Have you ever asked her?" inquired the President, with an apparent lack of interest which was no index to his anxiety.

"Why--no; not in so many words, I believe. But how the deuce is a fellow to make love to a girl when his grandfather has done it for him?"

"That, my dear Chester, is a question you ought to be able to answer for yourself. You can hardly expect Gertrude to beg you to save her little patrimony for her."

It was an unfortunate way of putting it, and Mr. Vennor regretted his unwisdom when Fleetwell carried the thought to its legitimate conclusion.

"There it is again, you see. That cursed legacy tangles the thing every time you make a rush at it. I can understand just how she feels about it. If she refuses me it will cost her something; if she doesn't there will be plenty of the clan who will say that she had an eye to the money."

"What difference will that make, so long as you know better?"

The question was so deliberate and matter-of-fact that Fleetwell forgot himself and let frankness run away with him.

"That's just it; how the deuce is a fellow going to know----" but at this point the cold eyes checked him, and he suddenly remembered that he was speaking to Gertrude's father. Whereupon he stultified himself and made a promise.

"Perhaps you are right, after all," he added. "Anyway, I'll have it out with her to-night, after she comes back."

"'Have it out with her' doesn't sound very lover-like," suggested the President, mildly. "I can assure you beforehand that you will have to take a different tone with her, whether you are sincere or not; otherwise you will waste your breath and enrich half a dozen charities we know of."

"Oh, I'll do it right," said Fleetwell, nonchalantly; "but I'd give my share of the money twice over if it didn't have to be done at all--that is, if the money matter could be taken out of it entirely, I mean."

They smoked on in reflective silence for five full minutes before the President saw fit to resume the conversation. Then he said, slowly and in his levellest tone:

"You are going to speak to her to-night; very good--you have my best wishes, as you know. But if anything should happen; if you should agree to disagree; it is you who must take the initiative. If you don't mean to marry her, you must tell her so plainly, and before you have given her a chance to refuse you. Do you understand?"

Fleetwell sprang to his feet as if he had received a blow. He was a young giant in physique, and he looked uncomfortably belligerent as he towered above the President's chair.

"By Jove, I do understand you, Cousin Francis, and I'm ashamed to admit it!" he burst out, wrathfully. "The men on my side of the family have all been gentlemen, so far as I know, and I'll not be the first to break the record. I shall do what my grandfather expected me to do--what Gertrude has a right to expect me to do--and in good faith; you may be very sure of that!" And having thus spoken his mind, he went out, leaving Mr. Francis Vennor to his own reflections, which were not altogether gladsome.

XXIII

THE LAND OF HEART'S DELIGHT

"Here is the place I was looking for," said Brockway, handing Gertrude to a seat on a great fallen fir which had once been a sentinel on the farthest outpost of the timber-line. "It's three years since I was here, but I remember this log and the little stream of snow-water. Isn't it clear and pure?"

"Everything ought to be that, up here in the face of that great shining mountain," she said; and then they spread their luncheon on the tree-trunk between them, and pitied the crowded Tadmorians in the little hotel below.

"I feel as if I could look down benignantly on the whole world," Gertrude declared, searching for the paper of salt and finding it not. "The things of yesterday seem immeasurably far away; and as for to-morrow, I could almost persuade myself there isn't going to be any."

"I wish there wasn't going to be any," said Brockway; but the manner in which he attacked the cold chicken slew the pessimism in the remark.

"Do you? I could almost say Amen to that," she rejoined, soberly.

"You? I should have thought you would be the last person in the world to want to stop Time's train."

She laughed softly. "That is very human, isn't it? I was thinking precisely the same thing of you. Tell me why you would like to abolish the to-morrows--or is it only the very next one that ever will be that you want to escape?"

"It's all of them, I think: but you mustn't ask me to tell you why."

"Why mustn't I?"

"Because I can't do it and keep my promise to tell you the truth."

"That is frank, at least," she retorted. "I hope you are not a conscience-stricken train-robber, or a murderer, or anything of that kind."

"Hardly," Brockway replied, helping himself to another sandwich; "but you would be quite horrified if I should tell you what I have really done."

"Do you think so? You might try me and see," she said, half pleading and half jesting.

Brockway thought about it for a moment.

"I'll do it--on one condition."

"You ought to be ashamed to propose conditions to me. What is it?"

"That you will tell me quite as truthfully why you agreed with me about the abolition of the to-morrows."

It was Gertrude's turn to consider, but she ended by accepting the proviso.

"After you," she said, with a constrained little laugh. "But who would ever think of exchanging confidences at this altitude over a stolen luncheon!"

"Not many, perhaps; but it's quite in keeping with our compact; we were not to do ordinary things, you know. And I'm sure this confession I am going to make is unpremeditated."

"Is it so very dreadful?"

"It is, I assure you, though I can make it in five words. I am hopelessly in love--don't laugh, please; there isn't the slightest element of levity in it for me."

Nevertheless, she did laugh, albeit there was pain at the catching of her breath.

"Forgive me," she said, quickly. "I don't mean to be silly if I can help it. Tell me about it, and why it is hopeless."

"It's the old story of Jack and his master," Brockway continued. "I have had the audacity to fall in love with the daughter of one of my betters."

"One of your betters? I'm afraid I can't quite understand that. Don't we live in a golden age when Jack is as good as his master, if he choose to make himself so?"

"By no manner of means," asserted this modern disciple of feudalism; "the line is drawn just as sharply now as it was when Jack was a bond thrall and his master was a swashbuckling baron."

"Who draws it? the thrall or the baron?"

The question opened up a new view of the matter, and Brockway took time to think about it.

"I'm not sure as to that," he said, doubtfully. "I've always taken it for granted it was the baron; but perhaps it's both of them."

"You may be very sure there are two sides to that shield, as to all others," she asserted. "But tell me more about your own trouble. Is it altogether impossible? Does the--the young woman think as you do?"

"It is; and I don't know what she thinks. I've never asked her, you know."

"You haven't? And still you sit here on this log and eat cold chicken and tell me calmly that it's hopeless! I said awhile ago that you were very daring, but I'll retract in deference to that."

"It's not exactly a lack of courage," Brockway objected, moved to defend himself when he would much rather have done something else. "There is another obstacle, and it is insurmountable. She is rich--rich in her own right, I'm told; and I am a poor man."

"How poor?"

"Pitifully so, from her point of view. So poor that if I gave her a five-room cottage and one servant, I could do no more."

"Many a woman has been happy with less."

"Doubtless, but they were not born in the purple."

"Some of them were, if by that you mean born with money to throw away. I suppose you might say that of me."

Brockway suddenly found the Denver eating-house cake very dry, but he could not take his eyes from her long enough to go and get a drink from the rill at the log-end.

"But you would never, marry a poor man," he ventured to say.

"Wouldn't I? That would depend very much upon circumstances," she rejoined, secure in the assurance that her secret was now double-locked in a dungeon of Brockway's own building. "If it were the right thing to do I shouldn't hesitate, though in that case I should go to him as destitute as the beggar maid did to King Cophetua."

Brockway's heart gave a great bound and then seemed to forget its office.

"How is that? I--I don't understand," he stammered.

Gertrude gazed across at the shining mountain and took courage from its calm passivity.

"I will tell you, because I promised to," she said. "I, too, have money in my own right, but it is only in trust, and it will be taken from me if I do not marry in accordance with the provisions of my granduncle's will. So you see, unless I accept my--the person named in the will, I shall be as dowerless as any proud poor man could ask."

"But you will accept your cousin," said Brockway, quickly putting Fleetwell's name into the hesitant little pause.

She looked steadfastly at the great peak and shook her head.

"I shall not," she answered, and her voice was so low that Brockway saw rather than heard the denial.

"Why?" he demanded.

She turned to him with sudden reproach in her eyes. "You press me too hardly, but I suppose I have given you the right. The reason is because I--I don't think enough of him in the right way."

"Tell me one other thing, if you can--if you will. Do you love someone else?" His voice was steadier now, and his eyes held her so that she could not turn back to the shining mountain, as she wanted to. None the less, she answered him truthfully, as she had promised.

"I do."

"Is he a poor man?"

"He says he is."

"How poor?"

"As poor as you said you were a moment ago."

"And you will give up all that you have had--all that you could keep--and go out into the world with him to take up life at its beginnings?"

"If he asks me to. But he will not ask me; he is too proud."

"How do you know?"

His gaze wavered for an instant, and she turned away quickly. "Because he has told me so."

Brockway rose rather unsteadily and went to the rivulet to get a drink. The sweetly maddening truth was beginning to beat its way into his brain, and he stood dazed for a moment before he remembered that he had brought no drinking-cup. Then he knelt by the stream, and, turning his silk travelling-cap inside out, filled it to the brim with the clear, cold water. His hands trembled a little, but he made shift to carry it to her without spilling much.

"It is a type of all that I have to offer you, besides myself--not even so much as a cup to drink out of," he said, and his voice was steadier than his hands. "Will you let me be your cup-bearer--always?"

She was moved to smile at the touch of old-world chivalry, but she fell in with his mood and put his hands away gently.

"No--after you; it is I who should serve." And when he had touched his lips to the water, she drank deeply and thanked him.

Brockway thrust the dripping cap absently into his pocket, and stood looking down on her like a man in a maze; stood so long that she glanced up with a quizzical little smile and said, "Are you sorry?"

He came to himself with a start and sat down on the tree-trunk beside her. "Sorry? You know better than that. But I do believe I'm a bit idiotic with happiness. Are you quite sure you know what you have done?"

"Quite. I think I made up my mind last night to do it--if you should ask me. It was after our ride on the engine; after my father had let me see what was in his mind."

"Ah, yes--your father. He will be very angry, won't he?"

"Yes"--reluctantly.

"But you will not let him make you recant?"

She laughed joyously. "You think you are in love with me, and yet that shows how little you really know of me, or of the family characteristics. We have plenty of unlovelinesses, but fickleness isn't one of them."

"Forgive me," he said, humbly; "but it seems to me there is so little to hold you, and so much to turn you aside. I----"

A series of shrill shrieks from the locomotive in the valley below interrupted him, and he rose reluctantly. "They're calling us in; we'll have to go."

She took his arm and they ran down the steep declivity, across the small plateau, and so on to the bottom of the railway cutting. Just before they reached the train, Brockway asked if he should tell the Burtons.

"As you please," she replied. "I shall tell my father and Cousin Jeannette as soon as we get back."

They found the passengers all aboard and the train waiting for them, and Mrs. Burton scolded them roundly for their misdeeds.

"We had a mind to go off and leave you," she said; "it would have served you right for running away. Where ever have you been?"

"Up on the hill, taking in the scenery," Brockway replied; and Gertrude abetted him with an enthusiastic description of Gray's Peak as seen from the plateau--a description which ran on without a break until the train paused at Silver Plume, where the Tadmorians debarked to burrow in a silver mine. Burton burrowed with them, as a matter of course, but his wife declined to go.

"I shall stay right here and keep an eye on these truants," she declared, with great severity. And Brockway and Gertrude exchanged comforting glances--as who should say, "What matters it now?"--and clasped hands under cover of the stir of debarkation. And Mrs. Burton saw all this without seeming to, and rejoiced gleefully at the bottom of her match-making heart.

When the Tadmorians had inspected the mine, and had come back muddy and besprinkled with water and besmirched with candle-drippings, the train went on its way down the canyon. Having done what he might toward pumping the well of tourist curiosity dry on the outward journey, Burton was given a little rest during the afternoon; and the quartette sat together in the coach and talked commonplace inanities when they talked at all. And the burden of even this desultory conversation fell mainly upon the general agent and his wife. The two young people were tranquilly happy, quite content to be going or staying, or what not, so long as they could be together.

At Golden, Brockway ran out and secured a copy of the President's telegram as it stood when written; and when opportunity offered, he showed it to Gertrude.

"It was purposely garbled by a friend of mine," he confessed, shamelessly; "but how much or how little I didn't know till now. I have no excuse to offer but the one you know. I thought it was my last chance to ever spend a day with you, and I would have done a much worse thing rather than lose it. Can you forgive me?"

"Forgive you for daring to make me happy? I should be something more or less than a woman if I didn't. But my father won't."

"No, I suppose not. But you must not try to shield me. When you tell him, let it be clearly understood that I alone am to blame. Is there any probability that he has carried out his threat of leaving you behind?"

"Not the least," she replied, confidently; "it was only what you of the West would call a--a little bluff, I think."

"You still think it will be better for you to tell him first? that I'd better not go to him at once?"

"I do; but you may speak to him afterward, if you think best."

"It must be this evening. When shall I come?"

"Any time after dinner. If you will watch the window of my stateroom, I'll let you know when you can find him alone."

The day was going out in a dusty twilight, and they were again standing on the rear platform of the second observation-car.

When the train clattered in over the switches and stopped on the outer track of the Denver station platform, this last car was screened by the dimly lighted hulk of the Tadmor switched in to receive its lading. Brockway ran down the steps and swung Gertrude lightly to the platform; after which he put his arms about her and kissed her passionately.

"God knows when the next time will be," he said, with a sudden foreboding of evil; and then he took her arm and led her swiftly across to the private car, leaving the Burtons to go whither they would.

XXIV

THE END OF A STOP-OVER

The waiter was laying the plates for dinner when Gertrude came out of her stateroom, and Fleetwell rose and placed a chair for her where they would be out of earshot of the others.

"Had a comfortably good time to-day?" he inquired, stretching himself lazily on the lounge at her side.

"Yes. What have you been doing?"

"'Socializing,' as Priscilla says; cantering about all over Denver, looking up people we shouldn't nod to at home. Where are your friends?"

"The Burtons? I think they went to a hotel. They are not going on till to-morrow night."

"I wonder what became of the passenger agent; I haven't seen him since morning," said the collegian, with his eyes lying in wait to pounce upon her secret.

"He was with us," she replied, calmly, and Fleetwell sat up immediately.

"Oughtn't I to be jealous?" he demanded.

"I don't know why you should be?"

"I fancy the others would say I ought to be."

"Why?"

"For obvious reasons; aren't we supposed to be as good as engaged?"

"I don't know about the supposition; but we are not engaged."

"No; and your father says it's my fault. Will you set the day?"

Her smile was sweet and ineffable. "What an enthusiastic wooer you are, Cousin Chester. Couldn't you rake up the embers and fan them into a tiny bit of a blaze? just for form's sake, you know."

"That's nonsense," he answered, placidly. "We've known each other too long for anything of that sort. But you haven't answered my question."

"About the day? That is nonsense, too. You know perfectly well there isn't going to be any day--not for us."

Fleetwell drew a long breath and ran his fingers through his hair.

"Don't let us make any mistake about this," he said, soberly. "I'm asking you in good faith to be my wife, you know."

"And I am refusing you in equally good faith. I don't love you at all--not in that way."

"You are quite sure of that?"

"Yes, surer now than ever before, though I've known it all along."

"Then you refuse me point blank?"

"I do."

He fetched another long breath and took her hand.

"That's the kindest thing you ever did for me, Gerty," he said, out of a full heart. "I--I'm ashamed to confess it, but I've been disloyal all along. It's----"

"It's Hannah Beaswicke; I knew it," she said, smiling wisely. "But don't humiliate yourself; I, too, have been 'disloyal,' as you call it."

"You?"

"Yes; I'll tell you about it some time--no, not now"--shaking her head--"dinner is ready."

It was thus that Fleetwell kept his promise to his cousin, and there had been never so much as a word about what Mr. Francis Vennor considered the main question at issue, namely, the fate of Gertrude's legacy. And when they came to the table together they were so evidently at peace that the President drew another false conclusion and wore his best King George smile throughout the entire dinner-hour.

At the conclusion of the meal, Fleetwell dodged the customary cigar with his cousin. Under the circumstances he deemed it prudent to give the chapter of accidents a clear field. Moreover, he conjectured that Gertrude had somewhat to say to her father, and would be grateful for an undisturbed half-hour; wherefore he proposed a stroll up-town to Mrs. Dunham and the Misses Beaswicke, and presently left the car with the three of them in tow.

The President was in his stateroom, refilling his cigar-case; and when he came out, Gertrude and Quatremain were alone in the large compartment.

"Where are the others?" he asked, pausing at her chair to light his cigar.

"They have gone up-town for a walk."

"H-m; and left you behind?"

"I didn't care to go." She saw that her opportunity was come, and gave the secretary a look which should have made him vanish at once. It did not, but her father cut the knot of that difficulty.

"It's a fine night; will you take a turn outside with me, while I smoke?" he said.

She acquiesced, and they went out to pace up and down the long platform. Two turns they made in silence while Gertrude sought vainly for words confessional, and at the third her father helped her without intending to.

"When is it to be?" he asked, abruptly.

She supposed he meant her marriage to Brockway, but she determined to make him speak plainly. So she said, "When is what to be?"

"Your marriage. Didn't you and Chester settle matters between you just before dinner?"

She laid fresh hold of her courage and answered, truthfully. "Yes, but not as you imagine. Chester asked me, because, I fancy, you told him to; and I refused him."

She expected nothing less than an outpouring of bitter words, but she was disappointed. Once and again they measured the length of the great platform before he spoke. Then he said, quite temperately, she thought, "So it is the passenger agent, after all, is it?"

"Yes." She said it resolutely, as one who may not be moved.

"Very good; you are your own mistress, and if you elect to be the wife of a wage-earning mechanic, I suppose it's your own affair."

There was so little heat in the innuendo that it seemed scarcely worth while to resent it; nevertheless she ventured to say: "Great-grandfather Vennor was a carpenter, and I suppose he worked for wages."

"Doubtless; but there is the better part of a century between then and now. However, I presume you have counted the cost. You lose your money, and that's the end of it--unless Chester happens to marry first."

"What difference would that make? It was I who set the conditions of the will aside."

"All the difference in the world. In this case, the law takes no cognizance of intention. If Chester marries first, it would be taken as _prima facie_ evidence that he had prevented you from fulfilling your part of the conditions. But that is neither here nor there; Chester is not exactly the kind of man to be caught in the rebound; and I presume you wouldn't be mercenary enough to wait for anything so indefinite as his marriage, anyway."

"No."

"Then you lose your money." He could not forbear the repetition.

"I know it."

"Does your--does the young man know it?"

"Yes; otherwise he would not have spoken."

"No?" There was the mildest suggestion of incredulity in the upward inflection. "Since you have made your decision, it is as well you should think so. You are quite willing to begin at the bottom with him, are you?"

"I am."

"Because I meant what I said last night. You have made your bed, and you will have to lie on it; you will get nothing from me."

"We ask nothing but--but your good will." Gertrude was as undemonstrative as the daughter of Francis Vennor had a right to be, but his coldness went near to breaking down her fortitude.

"My good will!" He turned upon her almost fiercely. "You have no right to expect it. What has come over you in the last twenty-four hours that you should override the traditions and training of your whole life? Has this fellow but to crook his finger at you to make you turn your back upon everything that is decent and respectable?"

"Don't," she said, with a little sob in her voice; "I can't listen if you abuse him. I love him; do you understand what that means?"

"No, I don't; you are daft, crazy, hypnotized." The gathering throng was beginning to make privacy impossible on the platform, and he led her back to the car. "You'll do as you please in the end, I suppose, but not here or now." He handed her up the steps of the private car and turned to go away.

"Papa--one word," she pleaded. "Won't you see Mr. Brockway to-night?"

"No; and if I do, it will be the worse for him." And when she had entered the car, he went away quickly and climbed the stairs to the train-despatcher's office on the second floor of the Union Depot.

Meanwhile, Brockway had eaten his supper and posted himself where he could watch what he supposed to be the window of Gertrude's stateroom for the promised signal. He saw the car empty itself, first of Fleetwell and the ladies, and then of the President and his daughter, and while he was waiting for the latter to return, Fleetwell came back, breathless.

"By Jove, Mr. Brockway, this is great luck!" he exclaimed. "You know Denver pretty well, don't you?"

"Fairly well. I knew it better when I lived here."

"Do you happen to know this gentleman?" handing Brockway a card with a name written across it.

"Yes; very well, indeed."

"Then I wish you'd come and help me find him. I've been out in a cab once, and the driver got lost. Will you do it?"

"With pleasure, if you'll get me back here quick. I have an engagement that can't be put off."

They ran out through the building and took a carriage. "Just get me to the house," said the collegian, "and you can come straight away back in the cab," but beyond this he offered no explanations, and Brockway gave the order to the driver.

When they reached the house in question, Fleetwell rang the bell, and the answer from within seemed to be satisfactory. "All right," he called back from the doorway; and a few minutes later Brockway was again on the station platform, watching the non-committal windows of the private car.

It was while the passenger agent was up-town with Fleetwell that President Vennor went to the despatcher's room. The result of his visit may be told in the words of a terse order which presently clicked through the sounder in the yardmaster's office.

"J. H. M.,

"Denver Yard.

"Send out Car Naught-fifty, President Vennor and party, on
Number 103, ten-five this P.M.

"A. F. V."

Of this Brockway knew nothing, and he haunted the vicinity of the spur-track with great patience for the better part of two hours. At nine-forty-five, Fleetwell and the ladies returned. They were all laughing and chatting gayly, and when they entered the car, Brockway gave up his vigil. It was too late to hope for a private interview with Mr. Vennor, and he concluded to go over to the Tadmor to see if his people were settled for the night.

Passing the telegraph office, he asked if there were any messages. There was one; the much requested extension of the gadfly's ticket; and thrusting it into his pocket, the passenger agent hurried across to the special sleeper.

Two minutes afterward, a switching-engine ran around on the spur-track, bumped gently against the Naught-fifty, and presently backed out into the yard with the private car in tow.

XXV

WESTWARD HO!

When Brockway boarded the Tadmor, most of the thirty-odd had gone to bed; but a committee of three was waiting in the smoking-room on the chance that the passenger agent would put in an appearance before the departure of the night train for the west. The little gentleman in the grass-cloth duster and velvet skull-cap was chairman of this committee, and he stated its object.

"We've been trying to make you more trouble, Mr. Brockway," he said, pleasantly. "Before the others went to bed, we discussed the advisability of leaving Denver to-night, instead of in the morning. It would give us an extra day in Salt Lake City, and that is what most of us would like. Can it be done?"

Brockway glanced at his watch and answered promptly. "It'll take sharp work; the train leaves in ten minutes. I'll try it, but if I make it, I can't go with you. My hand-baggage is at the hotel, and there's no time to send for it."

Ordinarily, the amendment would have killed the original proposition; but Mr. Somers saw that in Brockway's eyes which made him hasten to forestall argument.

"I was afraid of that," he said; "but it can't be helped. Of course, we'd like to have you with us, but I believe the extra day is of greater importance."

Brockway made a dumb show expressive of his gratitude. "All right; then I'll bid you all good-by, and get you out to-night, if I can."

"But I ah--protest!" came with shrill emphasis from the vestibule, and the night-capped head of the gadfly was thrust around the door-jamb. "I ah--stipulated----"

Brockway snatched the ticket-extending telegram from his pocket, thrust it into Mr. Somers's hand, and fled without another word. One minute later he was pleading eloquently with the train-despatcher.

"Oh, say, Fred, let up!" protested the man of orders. "It's too late, I tell you. The train'll pull out in two minutes, and I couldn't raise the yard in that time."

But the passenger agent would not be denied. He carried his point, as he usually did, and was shortly racing out across the platform, clothed with authority to hold the train until the Tadmor could be coupled thereto. Graffo, the conductor, was found just as he was about to give the signal, but he waited while the switching-engine whipped the Tadmor around and coupled it to the rear of the train, grumbling meanwhile, as was his time-honored prerogative.

"Like to know how the blazes I'm going to make time to-night, with them two extras hooked on at the last minute!" he growled; but Brockway corrected him.

"There's only one," he began; and when Graffo would have contradicted him, two belated passengers came in sight, hurrying across the platform to catch the waiting train. Brockway considerately ran back to help them aboard. It was the general agent and his wife; and Mrs. Burton made breathless explanations.

"Changed our minds at the last minute," she gasped. "John was afraid the President might not find him with his nose in his desk when he gets there." Then, with truly feminine irrelevance: "I've been dying to get a chance to ask you how you made out--to-day--with Gertrude; quick--the train's going!"

Brockway grinned. "You're the best chaperon in the world, Mrs. Burton--after the fact."

"Oh, I'm _so_ glad. Can't you come along and visit with us in Salt Lake?"

"Not for a king's ransom," retorted Brockway, laughing. "You may be very sure I sha'n't leave Denver while the Naught-fifty stays over there on----" He turned to point out the President's car and went speechless in the midst of his declaration at sight of the empty spur-track. The glare of the masthead arc-lights left no room for uncertainty. The private car was gone.

"Why, Fred! what is the matter?" queried Mrs. Burton anxiously from the step of the sleeping-car; but at that moment Graffo swung his lantern and the train began to move.

Brockway stood staring across at the empty spur in witless amazement, but he sprang back out of the way when the step of the car next to the regular sleeper brushed him in passing. The touch broke the spell. As he started back, the sheen of the nearest electric lamp fell fairly upon the oval medallion on the side of the moving car, and he saw the gilt figures "050" flash for a half-second before his eyes.