Trouble Shooter. Ernest Haycox
Above its collar Frank Peace had an incomplete view of yellow, well-combed hair, of cheeks very smooth and tinted pink by a vitality that strongly impressed itself upon him. The sense of an inward smiling was there for him, and the sense of a gallantry somewhat rare in a woman was there too—on rather long lips and in the clear hazel of her eyes.
She felt his glance; for her head came up and her eyes met his with a moment's steadiness. Campeaux jerked his big round cheeks about and showed Peace a strict civility—nothing else. The engine's long whistling fled by in gusty waves and there was a sudden break in the train's smooth running as it slackened for Archer Station. Peace untangled his legs from the gear piled around him and hoisted his long, flat frame one section at a time, as tall men learn to do in crowded spaces, and started down the aisle. He had to press the milling Irishmen aside. He did it without much ceremony, but he grinned a little as he made his way. There was a short chunk of a man in front of him who looked up—and grinned back; a Welshman all over and a scrappy bridge foreman with the devil in his blue eyes.
"Bully, me boy," he said. "This is the year we beat the Central into Ogden."
"Sure," said Peace. But he knew how to handle these men and so he added: "We'll get there if you can keep your bridges built ahead of the steel. The steel gang has a better foreman, Barney."
"The hell it has!" yelled Barney, "I can lick any black Irish steel layer in this world!"
The rivalry of these men was a keen, violent thing. A long Hibernian yell rocked along the car and a brawling voice called: "Where the jasus is that boy?"
Peace's grin grew longer and thinner, for the feel of this reckless, headlong fighting crowd ran through him and set up a like recklessness. He pushed his way to the end of the car where a blackened gallon coffeepot sat simmering on the stove. He got a cup and poured himself a jot of this stiff drink—strong enough to float a track bolt—and drank it; he stood there a moment with his face tipped down in a scowling pattern. Afterward he found a second cup. He filled both. He worked his way across to the frail Rose sitting so obscurely inside her closewrapped coat.
He said: "You look cold, Rose," gently, and watched her eyes lift and cling to him.
She took the cup, but held it still—a faint shred of color coming into her face, softening its stony expression. There was something about the girl he never understood—and failed to understand now; for in her was a faint grace that made him remember his manners.
She said, in a slow, murmuring breath: "Thank you," and looked down at the cup. There was a break in her reserve, a letting down of that hard wall she showed the men of this car; he saw it and turned away, not wishing to see more.
He said, "Gangway, you pick-and-shovel experts," and balanced the remaining cup above him.
The packed Irishmen in the aisle were hard to stir, and he put his free arm out without any ceremony and hauled them aside, and came to Big Sid Campeaux's section. The girl there had been watching him, measuring him in a manner that was straight and swift and without a smile. The pride in her was like steel; she had a breeding that in some way put him on the defensive. It seemed to him she kept him this way a long enough time before she smiled and accepted the coffee cup.
"It is very fhoughtful of you, Mr. Peace," she told him calmly.
"Maybe," he answered. "And maybe not." He looked over to Big Sid Campeaux who made a taciturn third party to this scene. The car pitched more slowly along the rails and somebody said, "Here's Archer, where Hills got killed last November." Then he drawled: "How are you, Sid?"
"Glad to see you again, Peace," grunted Campeaux. "Been in Omaha all winter?"
"No—just a month." Peace's glance whipped again to the girl. She had lifted the coffee cup to her lips, and her glance came over its rim to him, alert and interested and faintly amused. She had a quality, he thought swiftly, that struck him with a definite impact. Raw and rough as this surrounding scene was, it seemed to please her, it seemed to put a sparkle into the round hazel surfaces of her eyes. The restlessness of all these men and the shouldering of the desert wind outside seemed to appeal to a sense of adventure in her. The lightness of her hair shed a remote cameo glow across the smooth surface of her cheeks. She had a resolute chin, and her lips were longer than he had first noticed, and caught now in a smile, He didn't look at Campeaux but he spoke to the man with a real impatience. "Your manners, Sid, are rotten."
The train had come to a full stop and the car was swirling with that high and emphatic Hibernian talk. "When did you get the habit of expectin' help from me?" retorted Campeaux.
Peace stared deliberately at the man. The indolence went out of him and his lips made a straight line. "That's right," he suggested quietly.
There wasn't any expression on Campeaux's bland, gray-freckled cheeks. The big man had power in him, and it made him soft and noncommittal with his talk. A great diamond on one of his heavy fingers caught the smoky car light and threw back a brittle blue brilliance; and the sense of hostility between them was impossible to prevent. A little of that deep and resentful feeling got into Campeaux's eyes then and pulled his eyelids more closely together.
The motion of a man's shoulders in the seat behind Campeaux diverted Frank Peace's attention, and he saw Mitch Dollarhide slowly rise from a half-sprawled position and bend forward to catch his talk. Mitch's ragged mustache edged his mouth; the brim of his hat came well down over his eyes. It was a secretiveness and a shadowing in keeping with his ways, for he was Big Sid Campeaux's creature, walking always behind Campeaux like a well-trained brute. He watched Peace solemnly.
The train had been halted this while; and presently Paddy Miles thrust his way down the aisle with a sheet of flimsy telegraph paper in his hand for Peace. He said:
"Don't hold us up any longer than you can help, Mr. Peace. We're late into Cheyenne now."
Peace bowed at the girl and turned away. He had his look at the message; he took his time reading it, long legs braced across the aisle.
Barney, the Welshman, was speaking in his hearty way:
"And you will recall it was here we had to stop the engines last July when the buffalo went across."
Peace said: "Go ahead, Paddy," and returned to his seat.
The engine sent out its two short blasts; cold air poured down the aisle again and all the shifting men wheeled as the car jerked forward. Peace settled his long legs between his luggage and smoothed out the telegram:
Make no plans for cheyenne tonight. Reed.
Nan Normandy had a slanting profile view of Peace then. Unobserved, she could let her eyes speculate. If she never saw this man again, she told herself, she knew at least one thing about him: He had little respect for barriers and he had a reckless temper. It was there to be seen in the stubborn and slightly uneven lines of his cheeks, He sat indolent across the seats, with his wide, flat chest in repose; yet there was, she surmised, not the least repose in him. His hair was ink-black, his eyes a smoky gray; and his fists were hard. In one way he was elementary in his actions, for he had wanted to speak to her and had found a quick way of doing it. But he had done another thing, too, which lifted her interest enormously. He had stopped on the way to give the other cup of coffee to the girl sitting at the end of the car—a girl whose place in life was easily enough read. He had smiled at the girl with a sudden softening of his face. Men liked him, for all during this trip she had seen these unruly Irishmen stop and have a word with him; and she had seen his grin make a quick, rash streak across his face.
She turned to Campeaux so suddenly that she caught his heavy, studying look. "What did you say he did on the railroad?"
"His title," said Campeaux, "is assistant superintendent of construction. Under Reed, who is superintendent, and under General Dodge, the chief engineer." Campeaux let it ride like that a moment, afterward adding: "You'll be likely to find him wherever there happens to be a fight. Dodge and Reed use him to fix up trouble. Any kind of trouble."
"He's young," mused Nan Normandy.
"Twenty-six, I guess."
"And