A Fool for Love Part 3

The Rosemary party was rising, and Winton rose, too, folding the seat for Miss Virginia and carefully reaching her wrap from the rack.

"I am so glad to have met you," she said, giving him the tips of her fingers and going back to the conventionalities as if they had never been ignored.

But the sincerity in Winton's reply transcended the conventional form of it.

"Indeed, the pleasure has been wholly mine, I a.s.sure you. I hope the future will be kind to me and let me see more of you."

"Who knows?" she rejoined, smiling at him level-eyed. "The world has been steadily growing smaller since Shakespeare called it 'narrow.'"

He caught quickly at the straw of hope. "Then we need not say good-by?"

"No; let it be _auf Wiedersehen_," she said; and he stood aside to allow her to join her party.

Two hours later, when Adams was reading in his section and Winton was smoking his short pipe in the men's compartment and thinking things unspeakable with Virginia Carteret for a nucleus, there was a series of sharp whistle-shrieks, a sudden grinding of the brakes, and a jarring stop of the Limited--a stop not down on the time-card.

Winton was among the first to reach the head of the long train. The halt was in a little depression of the bleak plain, and the train-men were in conference over a badly-derailed engine when Winton came up.

A vast herd of cattle was lumbering away into the darkness, and a mangled carca.s.s under the wheels of the locomotive sufficiently explained the accident.

"Well, there's only the one thing to do," was the engineer's verdict.

"That's for somebody to mog back to Arroyo to wire for the wreck-wagon."

"Yes, by gum! and that means all night," growled the conductor.

There was a stir in the gathering throng of half-alarmed and all-curious pa.s.sengers, and a red-faced, white-mustached gentleman, whose soft southern accent was utterly at variance with his manner, hurled a question bolt-like at the conductor.

"All night, you say, seh? Then we miss ouh Denver connections?"

"You can bet to win on that," was the curt reply.

"d.a.m.n!" said the ruddy-faced gentleman; and then in a lower tone: "I beg your pahdon, my deah Virginia; I was totally unaware of your presence."

Winton threw off his overcoat.

"If you will take a bit of help from an outsider, I think we needn't wait for the wrecking-car," he said to the dubious trainmen. "It's bad, but not so bad as it looks. What do you say?"

Now, as everyone knows, it is not in the nature of operative railway men to brook interference even of the helpful sort. But they are as quick as other folk to recognize the man in essence, as well as to know the clan slogan when they hear it. Winton did not wait for objections, but took over the command as one in authority.

"Think we can't do it? I'll show you. Up on the tank, one of you, and heave down the jacks and frogs. We'll have her on the steel again before you can say your prayers."

At the hearty command, churlish reluctance vanished and everybody lent a willing hand. In two minutes the crew of the Limited knew it was working under a master. The frogs were adjusted under the derailed wheels, the jack-screws were braced to lift and push with the nicest accuracy, and all was ready for the attempt to back the engine in trial. But now the engineer shook his bead.

"I ain't the artist to move her gently enough with all that string o'

d.i.n.keys behind her," he said unhopefully.

"No?" said Winton. "Come up into the cab with and I'll show you how."

And he climbed to the driver's footboard with the doubting engineer at his heels.

The reversing-lever went over with a clash; the air whistled into the brakes; and Winton began to ease the throttle open. The steam sang into the cylinders, the huge machine trembling like a living thing under the hand of a master.

Slowly and by almost imperceptible degrees the life of the pent-up boiler power crept into the pistons and out through the connecting rods to the wheels. With the first thrill of the gripping tires Winton leaned from the window to watch the derailed trucks climb by half-inches up the inclined planes of the frogs.

At the critical instant, when the entire weight of the forward half of the engine was poising for the drop upon the rails, he gave the precise added impulse. The big ten-wheeler coughed hoa.r.s.ely and spat fire; the driving-wheels made a quick half-turn backward; and a cheer from the onlookers marked the little triumph of mind over matter.

Winton found Miss Carteret holding his overcoat when he swung down from the cab, and he fancied her enthusiasm was tempered with something remotely like embarra.s.sment. But she suffered him to walk back to the private car beside her; and in this sudden retreat from the scene of action he missed hearing the comments of his fellow craftsmen.

"You bet, he's no 'prentice," said the fireman.

"Not much!" quoth the engineer. "He's an all-round artist, that's about what he is. Shouldn't wonder if he was the travelin' engineer for some road back in G.o.d's country."

"Travelin' nothing!" said the conductor. "More likely he's a train-master, 'r p'raps a bigger boss than that. Call in the flag, Jim, and we'll be getting a move."

Oddly enough, the comment on Winton did not pause with the encomiums of the train crew. When the Limited was once more rushing on its way through the night, and Virginia and her cousin were safe in the privacy of their state-room, Miss Carteret added her word.

"Do you know, Bessie, I think it was Mr. Adams who scored this afternoon?" she said.

"How so?" inquired _la pet.i.te_ Bisque, who was too sleepy to be over-curious.

"I think he 'took a rise' out of me, as he puts it. Mr. Winton is precisely all the kinds of man Mr. Adams said he wasn't."

III. IN WHICH AN ITINERARY IS CHANGED

It was late breakfast time when the Transcontinental Limited swept around the great curve in the eastern fringe of Denver, paused for a registering moment at "yard limits," and went clattering in over the switches to come to rest at the end of its long westward run on the in-track at the Union Depot.

Having wired ahead to have his mail meet him at the yard limits registering station, Winton was ready to make a dash for the telegraph office the moment the train stopped.

"That is our wagon, over there on the narrow-gage," he said to Adams, pointing out the waiting mountain train. "Have the porter transfer our dunnage, and I'll be with you as soon as I can send a wire or two."

On the way across the broad platform he saw the yard crew cutting out the Rosemary, and had a glimpse of Miss Virginia clinging to the hand-rail and enjoying enthusiastically, he fancied, her first view of the mighty hills to the westward.

The temptation to let the telegraphing wait while he went to say good morning to her was strong, but he resisted it and hastened the more for the hesitant thought. Nevertheless, when he reached the telegraph office he found Mr. Somerville Darrah and his secretary there ahead of him, and he observed that the explosive gentleman who presided over the destinies of the Colorado and Grand River appeared to be in a more than usually volcanic frame of mind.

Now Winton, though new to the business of building railroads for the Utah Short Line, was not new to Denver or Colorado. Hence when the Rajah, followed by his secretarial shadow, had left the office, Winton spoke to the operator as to a friend.

"What is the matter with Mr. Darrah, Tom? He seems to be uncommonly vindictive this morning."

The man of dots and dashes nodded.

"He's always crankier this time than he was the other. He's a holy terror, the Rajah is. I wouldn't work on his road for a farm down East--not if my job took me within cussing distance of him. Bet a hen worth fifty dollars he is up in Mr. Colbert's office right now, raising particular sand because his special engine wasn't standing here ready to s.n.a.t.c.h his private car on the fly, so's to go on without losing headway."

Winton frowned thoughtfully, and he let his writing hand pause while he said, "So he travels special from Denver, does he?"

"On his own road?--well, I should smile. Nothing is too good for the Rajah; or too quick, when he happens to be in a hurry. I wonder he didn't have the T. C. pull him special from Kansas City."

Winton handed in his batch of telegrams and went his way reflective.