The Daughter of a Magnate. Frank H. Spearman
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?"
"How shall I ever reach that step?" she exclaimed, breaking in upon her own words and obstinately buffeting his own as she gazed with more than necessary dismay at the high vestibule tread.
"Would you hold the flowers a moment—" he asked—her sister appeared at the door—"so I may help you?" continued the patient railroad man.
"See, Marie, these dear flowers!" Marie clapped her hands as she ran forward. He held the flowers up. "Are they for me?" she cried.
"Will you take them?" he asked, as she bent over the guard-rail. "Oh, gladly." He turned instantly, but Gertrude had gained the step. "Thank you, thank you," exclaimed Marie. "What is their name, Mr. Glover?"
"I don't know any name for them except an Indian name. The Sioux, up in their country, call them sky-eyes."
"Sky-eyes! Isn't that dear? sky-eyes."
"You are heated," continued Marie, looking at him, "you have walked a long way. Where in all this desolate, desolate country could you find flowers such as these?"
"Back a little way in a cañon."
"Are there many in a desert like this?"
"I know of none—at least within many miles—yet there may be others in nearby hiding-places. The desert is full of surprises."
"You are so warm, are you not coming up to sit down while I get a bowl?"
"I will go forward, thank you, and see when we are to get away. Your sister," he added, looking evenly at Marie as Gertrude stood beside her, "asked this morning why there were no flowers in this country, and while we were delayed I happened to recollect that cañon and the sky-eyes."
"I think your stupid man the most interesting we have met since we left home, Gertrude," remarked Marie at her embroidery after dinner.
"I told you he would be," said Mrs. Whitney, suppressing a yawn. Gertrude was playing ping-pong with Doctor Lanning. "But isn't he homely?" she exclaimed, sending a cut ball into the doctor's watch-chain.
Louise returned soon with Allen Harrison from the forward car.
"The programme for the evening is arranged," she announced, "and it's fine. We are to have a big campfire over near that butte—right out under the stars. And Mr. Blood is going to tell a story, and while he's telling it, Mr. Glover—oh, drop your ping-pong, won't you, and listen—has promised to make taffy and we are to pull it—won't that be jolly? and then the coyotes are to howl."
A little later all left the car together. Above the copper edge of the desert ranges the moon was rising full and it brought the nearer buttes up across the stretches of the night like sentinels. In the sky a multitude of stars trembled, and wind springing from the south fanned the fire growing on the plateau just off the right of way.
The party disposed themselves in camp-chairs and on ties about the big fire. Near at hand, Glover, who already had a friend in Clem, the cook, was feeding chips into a little blaze under a kettle slung with his taffy mixture, which the women in turn inspected, asked questions about, and commented sceptically upon.
Doctor Lanning brought his banjo, and when the party had settled low about the fire it helped to keep alive the talk. Every few minutes the taffy and the coyotes were demanded in turn, and Glover was kept busy apologizing for the absence of the wolves and the slowness of his kettle, under which he fed the small chips regularly.
As the night air grew sharper more wraps were called for. When Doctor Lanning and Mrs. Whitney started after them they asked Gertrude what they should bring her, but she said she needed nothing.
As she sat, she could see Glover, her sister Marie on a stool beside him, watching the boiling taffy. With one foot doubled under him for a seat, and an elbow supported on his knee he steadied himself like a camp cook behind his modest fire; but even as he crouched the blaze threw him up astonishingly tall. Heedless of the chatter around the big fire the man whose business was to bridle rivers, fight snowslides, raze granite hills, and dispute for their dizzy passes with the bighorn and the bear, bent patiently above his pot of molasses, a coaxing stick in one hand and a careful chip in the other.
"Where, pray, Mr. Glover, did you learn that?" demanded Marie Brock. He had been explaining the chemical changes that follow each stage of the boiling in sugar. "I learned the taffy business from the old negro mammy that 'raised' me down on the Mississippi, Aunt Chloe. She taught me everything I know—except mathematics—and mathematics I don't know anyway." Mrs. Whitney was distributing the wraps. "I would have brought your Newmarket if I could have found it, Gertrude."
"Her Newmarket!" exclaimed Allen Harrison. "Gertrude hasn't told the Newmarket story, eh? She threw it over a tramp asleep in the rain down at the Spider Water bridge."
"What?"
"—And was going to disown me because I wouldn't give up my overcoat for a tarpaulin."
"Gertrude Brock!" exclaimed Mrs. Whitney. "Your Newmarket! Then you deserve to freeze," she declared, settling under her fur cape. "What will she do next? Now, Mr. Blood, we are all here; what about that story?"
Morris Blood turned. Glover, Marie Brock watching, tested the foaming candy. Doctor Lanning, on a cushion, strummed his banjo.
In front of Gertrude, Harrison, inhaling a cigarette, stretched before the fire. Declining a stool, Gertrude was sitting on a chair of ties. One, projecting at her side, made a rest for her elbow and she reclined her head upon her hand as she watched the flames leap.
"The incident Miss Donner asked about occurred when I was despatching," began the superintendent.
"Oh, are you a despatcher, too?" asked Louise, clasping her hands upon her knee as she leaned forward.
"They would hardly trust me with a train-sheet now; this was some time ago."
CHAPTER IV