The Iron Trail Part 27

"Eliza Violet, this is your chance. It's underhanded and mean, but--you're a mean person, and the finger of Providence is directing you." She s.n.a.t.c.hed up the silken kimono and ran into her room, locking the door behind her. Hurriedly she put it on, then posed before the mirror. Next down came her hair amid a shower of pins. She arranged it loosely about her face, and, ripping an artificial flower from her "party" hat, placed it over her ear, then swayed grandly to and fro while the golden dragons writhed and curved as if in joyous admiration.

A dozen times she slipped out of the garment and, gathering it to her face, kissed it; a dozen times she donned it, strutting about her little room like a peac.o.c.k. Her tip-tilted nose was red and her eyes were wet when at last she laid it out upon her bed and knelt with her cheek against it.

"Gee! If only I were pretty!" she sighed, "I almost believe he--likes me."

Tom Slater laboriously propelled himself up the hill to the bungalow that evening, and seated himself on the topmost step near where Eliza was rocking. She had come to occupy a considerable place in his thoughts of late, for she was quite beyond his understanding. She affected him as a mental gad-fly, stinging his mind into an activity quite unusual. At times he considered her a nice girl, though undoubtedly insane; then there were other moments when she excited his deepest animosity. Again, on rare occasions she completely upset all his preconceived notions by being so friendly and so sympathetic that she made him homesick for his own daughter. In his idle hours, therefore he spent much time at the Appleton cottage.

"Where have you been lately, Uncle Tom?" she began.

Slater winced at the appellation, but ignored it.

"I've been out on the delta hustling supplies ahead. Heard the news?"

"No."

"Curtis Gordon has bought the McDermott outfit in Kyak."

"That tells me nothing. Who is McDermott?"

"He's a shoe-stringer. He had a wildcat plan to build a railroad from Kyak to the coal-fields, but he never got farther than a row of alder stakes and a book of press clippings."

"Does that mean that Gordon abandons his Hope route?"

"Yep! He's swung in behind us and the Heidlemanns. Now it's a three-sided race, with us in the lead. Mellen just brought in the news half an hour ago; he was on his way down from the glaciers when he ran into a field party of Gordon's surveyors. Looks like trouble ahead if they try to crowd through the canon alongside of us."

"He must believe Kyak Bay will make a safe harbor."

"Don't say it! If he's right, we're fried to a nice brown finish on both sides and it's time to take us off the stove. I'm praying for a storm."

"'The prayers of the wicked are an abomination unto the Lord,'" quoted Eliza.

"Sure! But I keep right on praying just the same. It's a habit now. The news has set the chief to jumping sideways."

"Which, translated, I suppose means that he is disturbed."

"Or words to that effect! Too bad they changed that newspaper story of yours."

"Yes."

"It put a crimp in him."

"How--do you mean?"

"He had some California capitalists tuned up to put in three million dollars, but when they read that our plan was impracticable their fountain-pens refused to work."

"Oh!" Eliza gasped, faintly.

Slater regarded her curiously, then shook his head. "Funny how a kid like you can scare a bunch of hard-headed bankers, ain't it?" he said.

"Doc Gray explained that it wasn't your fault, but--it doesn't take much racket to frighten the big fish."

"What will Mr. O'Neil do?"

"Oh, he'll fight it out, I s'pose. The first thing is to block Gordon.

Say, I brought you a present."

"This is my lucky day," smiled Eliza as Tom fumbled in his pocket. "I'm sure I shall love it."

"It ain't much, but it was the best in the crate and I shined it up on my towel." Mr. Slater handed Eliza a fine red apple of prodigious size, at sight of which the girl turned pale.

"I--don't like apples," she cried, faintly.

"Never mind; they're good for your complexion."

"I'd die before I'd eat one."

"Then I'll eat it for you; my complexion ain't what it was before I had the smallpox." When he had carried out this intention and subjected his teeth to a process of vacuum-cleaning, he asked: "Say, what happened to your friend who chewed gum?"

"Well, he was hardly a friend," Miss Appleton said, "If he had been a real friend he would have listened to my warning."

"Gum never hurt anybody," Slater averred, argumentatively.

"Not ordinary gum. But you see, he chewed nothing except wintergreen--"

"That's what I chew."

Eliza's tone was one of shocked amazement. "Not REALLY? Oh, well, some people would thrive on it, I dare say, but he had indigestion."

"Me too! That's why I chew it."

The girl eyed him during an uncomfortable pause. Finally she inquired:

"Do you ever feel a queer, gnawing feeling, like hunger, if you go without your breakfast?"

"Unh-hunh! Don't you?"

"I wouldn't alarm you for the world, Uncle Tom--"

"I ain't your uncle!"

"You might chew the stuff for years and not feel any bad effects, but if you wake up some morning feeling tired and listless--"

"I've done that, too." Slater's gloomy eyes were fixed upon her with a look of vague apprehension. "Is it a symptom?"

"Certainly! Pepsin-poisoning, it's called. This fellow I told you about was a charming man, and since we had all tried so hard to save him, we felt terribly at the end."

"Then he died?"

"Um-m! Yes and no. Remind me to tell you the story sometime--Here comes Dan, in a great hurry."

Young Appleton came panting up the hill.