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Daughter of a Magnate

<h3> CHAPTER XIII </h3> <h3> BACK TO THE MOUNTAINS </h3> The sudden appearance of Mr. Brock at any time and at any point where he had interests would surprise only those that did not know him. On the coast the party had broken up, Louise Donner going into Colorado with friends, and Harrison returning to Pittsburg. Planning originally to recross the mountains by a southern route, and to give himself as much of a pleasure trip as he ever took, Mr. Brock changed all his plans at the last moment—a move at which he was masterly—and wired Bucks to meet him at Bear Dance for the return trip. Doctor Lanning, moreover, had advised that Marie spend some further time in the mountains, where her gain in health had been decided. Among the features the general manager particularly wished Mr. Brock to see before leaving the mountain country was the Crab Valley dam and irrigation canal, and the second day after the president's special entered the division it was side-tracked at a way station near Sleepy Cat for an inspection of the undertaking. The trip to the canal was by stage with four horses, and the ladies had been asked to go. The morning was so exhilarating and the ride so fast that when the head horses dipped over the easy divide flanking the line of the canal on the south, and the brake closed on the lumbering wheels, the visitors were surprised to discover almost at their feet a swarming army of men and horses scraping in the dusty bed of a long cut. There the heavy work was to be seen, and to give his party an idea of its magnitude, Bucks had ordered the stage driven directly through the cut itself. With Mr. Brock he sat up near the driver. Back of them were Doctor Lanning and Gertrude Brock; within rode Mrs. Whitney and Marie. As the stage, getting down the high bank, lurched carefully along the scraper ways of the yellow bed, shovellers, drivers, and water-boys looked curiously at the unusual sight, and patient mules nosed meekly the alert, nervous horses that dragged the stage along the uneven way. At the lower end of the cut a more formidable barrier interposed. A pocket of gravel on the eastern bank had slipped, engulfing a steam shovel, and a gang of men were busy about it. On a level overlooking the scene, in corduroy jackets and broad hats, stood two engineers. At times one of them gave directions to a foreman whose gang was digging the shovel out. His companion, perceiving the approach of the stage, signalled the driver sharply, and the leaders were swung to the right of the shovellers so that the stage was brought out on a level some distance away. Bucks first recognized the taller of the two men. "There's Glover," he exclaimed. "Hello!" he called across the canal bed. "I didn't look for you here." Glover lifted his hat and walked over to the stage. "I came up last night to see Ed Smith about running his flume under Horse Creek bridge. They cross us, you know, in the cañon there," said he, in his slow, steady way. "Just as we got on the ponies to ride down, this slide occurred——" "Glad you couldn't get away. We want to see Ed Smith," returned Bucks, getting down. The women were already greeting Glover, and avoiding Gertrude's eye while he included her in his salutation to all, he tried to answer several questions at once. Smith, the engineer in charge of the canal, was talking with Bucks and Mr. Brock. On top of the stage Doctor Lanning was trying to persuade Gertrude not to get down; but she insisted. "Mr. Glover will help me, I am sure," she said, looking directly at the evading Glover, who was absorbed in his talk with her sister. "I should advise you not to alight, Miss Brock," said he, unable to ignore her request. "You will sink into this dusty clay——" "I don't mind that, but unless you will give me your hand," she interrupted, putting her boot on the foot rest to descend, "I shall certainly break my neck." When he promptly advanced she took both of his offered hands with a laugh at her recklessness and dropped lightly beside him. "May I go over where you stood?" she asked at once. "I shouldn't," he ventured. "But I can't see what they are doing." She walked capriciously ahead, and Glover reluctantly followed. "Why shouldn't you?" she questioned, waiting for him to come to her side. "It isn't safe." "Why did you stand there?" He answered with entire composure. "What would be perfectly safe for me might be very dangerous for you." She looked full at him. "How truly you speak." Yet she did not stop, though at each step her feet sunk into the loosened soil. "Pray, don't go farther," said Glover. "I want to see the men digging." "Then won't you come around here?" "But may I not walk over to that car?" "This way is more passable." "Then why did you make the driver turn away from that side?" "You have good eyes, Miss Brock." "Pray, what is the matter with that man lying behind the car?" Glover looked fairly at her at last. "A shoveller was hurt when the gravel slipped a few minutes ago. When the warning came he did not understand and got caught." "Oh, let us get Doctor Lanning; something can be done for him." "No. It is too late." Horror checked her. "Dead?" "Yes. I did not want you to know this. Your sister is easily shocked——" She paused a moment. "You are very thoughtful of Marie. Have you a sister?" "I haven't. Why do you ask?" "Who taught you thoughtfulness?" she asked, gravely. He stood disconcerted. "I find consideration common among Western men," she went on, generalizing prettily; "our men don't have it. Does a life so rough and terrible as this give men the consideration that we expect elsewhere and do not find? Ah, that poor shoveller. Isn't it horrible to die so? Did everyone else escape?" "They are ready to start, I think," he suggested, uneasily. "Oh, are they?" "You are coming to see us?" called Marie, leaning from the top, while Glover paused behind her sister, when they had reached the stage. He stood with his hat in his hand. The dazzling sun made copper of the swarthy brown of his lower face and brought out the white of his forehead where the hair crisped wet in the heat of the morning. Gertrude Brock, after she had gained her seat with his help, looked down while he talked; looked at the top of his head, and listening vaguely to Marie, noted his long, bony hand as it clung to the window strap—the hand of the most audacious man she had ever met in her life—who had made an avowal to her on the observation platform of her father's own car—and she mused at the explosion that would have followed had she ever breathed a syllable of the circumstance to her own fiery papa. But she had told no one—least of all, the young man that had asked her before she left Pittsburg to marry him and was now writing her every other day—Allen Harrison. Indeed, what could be more ridiculously embarrassing than to be assailed so unexpectedly? She had no mind to make herself anyone's laughing-stock by speaking of it. One thing, however, she had vaguely determined—since Glover had frightened her she would retaliate at least a little before she returned to the quiet of Fifth Avenue. Marie was still talking to him. "Why haven't you heard? I thought sister would have told you. The doctor says I gained faster here than anywhere between the two oceans, and we are all to spend six weeks up at Glen Tarn Springs. Papa is going East and coming back after us, and we shall expect you to come to the Springs very often." The stage was starting. Gertrude faced backward as she sat. She could see Glover's salutation, and she waved a glove. He was as utterly confused as she could desire. She saw him rejoin his companion engineer near where lay the shoveller with the covered face, and the thought of the terrible accident depressed her. As she last saw Glover he was pointing at the faulty bank, and she knew that the two men were planning again for the safety of the men. About Glen Tarn, now quite the best known of the Northern mountain resorts, there is no month like October: no sun like the October sun, and no frost like the first that stills the aspen. Moreover, the travel is done, the parks are deserted, the mountains robing for winter. In October, the horse, starting, shrinks under his rider, for the lion, always moving, never seen, is following the game into the valleys, leaving the grizzly to beat his stubborn retreat from the snow line alone. Starting from the big hotel in a new direction every day the Pittsburgers explored the valleys and the cañons, for the lake and the springs nestle in the Pilot Mountains and the scenery is everywhere new. Mount Pilot itself rises loftily to the north, and from its sides may be seen every peak in the range. One day, for a novelty, the whole party went down to Medicine Bend, nominally on a shopping expedition, but really on a lark. Medicine Bend is the only town within a day's distance of Glen Tarn Springs where there are shops; and though the shopping usually ended in a chorus of jokes, the trip on the main line trains, which they caught at Sleepy Cat, was always worth while, and the dining-car, with an elaborate supper in returning, was a change from the hotel table. Sometimes Gertrude and Mrs. Whitney went together to the headquarters town—Gertrude expecting always to encounter Glover. When some time had passed, her failure to get a glimpse of him piqued her. One day with her aunt going down they met Conductor O'Brien. He was more than ready to answer questions, and fortunately for the reserve that Gertrude loved to maintain, Mrs. Whitney remarked they had not seen Mr. Glover for some time. "No one has seen much of him for two weeks; he had a little bad luck," explained Conductor O'Brien. "Indeed?" "Three weeks ago he was up at Crab Valley. They had a cave-in on the irrigation canal and two or three men got caught under a coal platform near the steam shovel. Glover was close by when it happened. He got his back under the timbers until they could get the men out and broke two of his ribs. He went home that night without knowing of it, but a couple of days afterward he sneezed and found it out right away. Since then he's been doing his work in a plaster cast." Their return train that day was several hours behind time and Gertrude and her aunt were compelled to go up late to the American House for supper. A hotel supper at Medicine Bend was naturally the occasion of some merriment, and the two diverted themselves with ordering a wild assortment of dishes. The supper hour had passed, the dining-room had been closed, and they were sitting at their dessert when a late comer entered the room. Gertrude touched her aunt's arm—Glover was passing. Mrs. Whitney's first impulse was to halt the silent engineer with one of her imperative words. To think of him was to think only of his easily approachable manner; but to see him was indistinctly to recall something of a dignity of simplicity. She contented herself with a whisper. "He doesn't see us." At the lower end of the room Glover sat down. Almost at once Gertrude became conscious of the silence. She handled her fork noiselessly, and the interval before a waitress pushed open the swinging kitchen door to take his order seemed long. The Eastern girl watched narrowly until the waitress flounced out, and Glover, shifting his knife and his fork and his glass of water, spread his limp napkin across his lap, and resting his elbow on the table supported his head on his hand. The surroundings had never looked so bare as then, and a sense of the loneliness of the shabby furnishings filled her. The ghastliness of the arc-lights, the forbidding whiteness of the walls, and the penetrating odors of the kitchen seemed all brought out by the presence of a man alone. Mrs. Whitney continued to jest, but Gertrude responded mechanically. Glover was eating his supper when the two rose from their table, and Mrs. Whitney led the way toward him. "So, this is the invalid," she said, halting abruptly before him. "Mrs. Whitney!" exclaimed Glover, trying hastily to rise as he caught sight of Gertrude. "Will you please be seated?" commanded Mrs. Whitney. "I insist——" He sat down. "We want only to remind you," she went on, "that we hate to be completely ignored by the engineering department even when not officially in its charge." "But, Mrs. Whitney, I can't sit if you are to stand," he answered, greeting Gertrude and her aunt together. "You are an invalid; be seated. Nothing but toast?" objected Mrs. Whitney, drawing out a chair and sitting down. "Do you expect to mend broken ribs on toast?" "I'm well mended, thank you. Do I look like an invalid?" "But we heard you were seriously hurt." He laughed. "And want to suggest Glen Tarn as a health resort." "Unfortunately, the doctor has discharged me. In fact, a broken rib doesn't entitle a man to a lay-off. I hope your sister continues to improve?" he added, looking at Gertrude. "She does, thank you. Mrs. Whitney and I have been talking of the day we met you at the irrigation—" he did not help her to a word—"works," she continued, feeling the slight confusion of the pause. "You"—he looked at her so calmly that it was still confusing—"you were hurt before we met you and we must have seemed unconcerned under the circumstances. We speak often at Glen Tarn of the delightful weeks we spent in your mountain wilds last summer," she added. Glover thanked her, but appeared absorbed in Mrs. Whitney's attempt to disengage her eye-glasses from their holder, and Gertrude made no further effort to break his restraint. Mrs. Whitney talked, and Glover talked, but Gertrude reserved her bolt until just before their train started. He had gone with them, and they were standing on the platform before the vestibule steps of their Pullman car. As the last moment approached it was not hard to see that Glover was torn between Mrs. Whitney's rapid-fire talk and a desire to hear something from Gertrude. She waited till the train was moving before she loosed her shaft. Mrs. Whitney had ascended the steps, the porter was impatient, Glover nervous. Gertrude turned with a smile and a totally bewildering cordiality on the unfortunate man. "My sister," her glove was on the hand-rail, "sends some sort of a message to Mr. Glover every time I come to Medicine Bend—but the gist of them all is that she would be very"—the train was moving and they were stepping along with it—"glad to see you at Glen Tarn before——" "Gertrude," screamed Mrs. Whitney, "will you get on?" Glover's eyes were growing like target-lights. "—before we go East," continued Gertrude. "So should I," she added, throwing in the last three words most inexplicably, as she kept step with the engineer. But she had not miscalculated the effect. "Are you to go soon?" he exclaimed. The porter followed them helplessly with his stool. Mrs. Whitney wrung her hands, and Gertrude attempted to reach the lower tread of the car step. Someone very decidedly helped her, and she laughed and rose from his hands as lightly as to a stirrup. When she collected herself, after the pleasure of the spring, Mrs. Whitney was scolding her for her carelessness; but she was waving a glove from the vestibule at a big hat still lifted in the dusk of the platform. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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