The Iron Trail Part 16

Omar itself was a mushroom city, sprung up by magic, as if the dampness at its roots had caused it to rise overnight. A sawmill shrieked complainingly; a noisy switch-engine shunted rows of flat cars back and forth, tooting l.u.s.tily; the rattle of steam-winches and the cries of stevedores from a discharging freighter echoed against the hillsides.

Close huddled at the water-front lay the old cannery buildings, greatly expanded and multiplied now and glistening with fresh paint. Back of them again lay the town, its stumpy, half-graded streets terminating in the forest like the warty feelers of a stranded octopus. Everywhere was hurry and confusion, and over all was the ever-present shroud of mist which thickened into showers or parted reluctantly to let the sun peep through.

Dan Appleton, his clothing dewy from the fog, his cheeks bronzed by exposure, was over the rail before the ship had made fast, and had Eliza in his arms, crushing her with the hug of a bear.

"Come up to the house, Sis, quick!" he cried, when the first frenzy of greeting was over--"your house and mine!" His eyes were dancing, his face was alight with eagerness.

"But, Danny," she laughed, squeezing his arm tenderly, "you live with Mr. O'Neil and all those other men in a horrible, crawling bunk-house."

"Oh, do I? I'll have you know that our bunk-houses don't crawl. And besides--But wait! It's a s'prise."

"A s'prise?" she queried, eagerly. "For me?"

He nodded.

"Tell me what it is, quick! You know I never could wait for s'prises."

"Well, it's a brand-new ultra-stylish residence for just you and me.

When the chief heard you were coming he had a cottage built."

"Danny! It was only five days ago that I cabled you!"

"That's really ten days for us, for you see we never sleep. It is finished and waiting, and your room is in white, and the paint will be dry to-morrow. He's a wonder!"

Remembering the nature of her mission, Eliza demurred. "I'm afraid I can't live there, Dan. You know"--she hesitated--"I may have to write some rather dreadful things about him."

"What?" Dan's face fell. "You are going to attack the chief! I had no idea of that!" He looked genuinely distressed and a little stern.

She laid a pleading hand upon his arm. "Forgive me, Dan," she said. "I knew how you would feel, and, to tell the truth, I don't like that part of it one bit. But it was my big chance--the sort of thing I have been waiting years for. I couldn't bear to miss it." There was a suspicion of tears in her eyes. "I didn't think it all out. I just came. Things get awfully mixed, don't they? Of course I wouldn't attack him unfairly, but I do believe in conservation--and what could I do but come here to you?"

Dan smiled to rea.s.sure her. "Perhaps you won't feel like excoriating him when you learn more about things. I know you wouldn't be unfair.

You'd flunk the job first. Wait till you talk to him. But you can't refuse his kindness, for a time at least. There's nowhere else for you to stay, and Murray would pick you up and put you into the cottage, muck-rake and all, if I didn't. He had to go out on the work this morning or he'd have been here to welcome you. He sent apologies and said a lot of nice things, which I've forgotten."

"Well"--Eliza still looked troubled--"all right. But wait," she cried, with a swift change of mood. "I've made a little friend, the dearest, the most useless creature! We shared the same stateroom and we're sisters. She actually says I'm pretty, so of course I'm her slave for life." She hurried away in the midst of Dan's loyal protestations that she WAS pretty--more beautiful than the stars, more pleasing to the eye than the orchids of Brazil. A moment later she reappeared to present Natalie Gerard.

Dan greeted the new arrival with a cordiality in which there was a trace of shyness unusual with him. "We've made quite a change since you were up here, Miss Gerard," he remarked. "The ships stop first at Omar now, you see. I trust it won't inconvenience you."

"Not in the least," said Natalie. "I shall arrive at Hope quite soon enough."

"Omar Khayyam is out in the wilderness somewhere," Eliza informed her girl friend, "with his book of verses and his jug of wine, I suppose."

"Mr. O'Neil?"

"Yes. But he'll be back soon, and meanwhile you are to come up and see our paradise."

"It--looks terribly wet," Natalie ventured. "Perhaps we'd better wait until the rain stops."

"Please don't," Dan laughed. "It won't stop until autumn and then it will only change to snow. We don't have much sunshine--"

"You must! You're tanned like an Indian," his sister exclaimed.

"That's rust! O'Neil wanted to get a record of the bright weather in Omar, so he put a man on the job to time it, but the experiment failed!"

"How so?"

"We didn't have a stop-watch in town. Now come! n.o.body ever catches cold here--there isn't time."

He led the two girls ash.o.r.e and up through the town to a moss-green bungalow, its newness attested by the yellow sawdust and fresh shavings which lay about. Amid their exclamations of delight he showed them the neatly furnished interior, and among other wonders a bedroom daintily done in white, with white curtains at the mullioned windows and a suite of wicker furniture.

"Where he dug all that up I don't know," Dan said, pointing to the bed and dresser and chairs. "He must have had it hidden out somewhere."

Eliza surveyed this chamber with wondering eyes. "It makes me feel quite ashamed," she said, "though, of course, he did it for Dan. When he discovers my abominable mission he'll probably set me out in the rain and break all my lead-pencils. But--isn't he magnificent?"

"He quite overwhelms one," Natalie agreed. "Back in New York, he's been sending me American Beauties every week for more than a year. It's his princely way." She colored slightly, despite the easy frankness of her manner.

"Oh, he's always doing something like that," Dan informed them, whereupon his sister exclaimed:

"You see, Natalie! The man is a viper. If he let his beard grow I'm sure we'd see it was blue."

"You shall have an opportunity of judging," came O'Neil's voice from behind them, and he entered with hands outstretched, smiling at their surprise. When he had expressed his pleasure at Natalie's presence and had bidden both her and Eliza welcome to Omar, he explained:

"I've just covered eighteen miles on a railroad tricycle and my back is broken. The engines were busy, but I came, anyhow, hoping to arrive before the steamer. Now what is this I hear about my beard?"

It was Eliza's turn to blush, and she outdid Natalie.

"They were raving about your gallantry," said Dan with all a brother's ruthlessness, "until I told them it was merely a habit of mind with you; then Sis called you a Bluebeard."

O'Neil smiled, stroking his stubbly chin. "You see it's only gray."

"I--don't see," said Eliza, still flushing furiously.

"You would if I continued to let it grow."

"Hm-m! I think, myself, it's a sort of bluish gray," said Dan.

"You are still working miracles," Natalie told O'Neil, an hour later, while he was showing his visitors the few sights of Omar--"miracles of kindness, as usual."

Dan and his sister were following at a distance, arm in arm and chattering like magpies.

"No, no! That cottage is nothing. Miss Appleton had to have some place to stop."

"This all seems like magic." Natalie paused and looked over the busy little town. "And to think you have done it in a year."

"It was not I who did it; the credit belongs to those 'boys' of whom I told you. They are all here, by the way--Parker, McKay, Mellen, Sheldon, 'Doc' Gray--he has the hospital, you know."

"And Mr. Slater?"

"Oh, we couldn't exist without 'Happy Tom'! No, the only miracle about all this is the loyalty that has made it possible. It is that which has broken all records in railroad-building; that's what has pushed our tracks forward until we're nearly up to one of Nature's real miracles.

You shall see those glaciers, one of these days. Sometimes I wonder if even the devotion of those men will carry us through the final test.