On the Pullman occupied by Miss Travenion there is only one other traveller—a young girl who is being forwarded to an Eastern school by Gentile parents connected with the Union Pacific Railway, in Ogden.
These, however, after a little, set up a wail. It is for supper, which the conductor grimly informs them is waiting for them at Green River, ninety miles away.
Then comes the triumph of Chicago business methods, and Buck Powers, issuing from the baggage car, cries dominantly: "PIES!! Beefsteak pies!—Mutton pies!—Dried-apple pies! PIES!!"
Going to him, Lawrence says anxiously: "Have you looked after her?"
"Do you think I'd let Miss Beauty starve?" utters the boy in stern reproach. "I have provisioned her stateroom for two days. She's got three beefsteak pies, two mutton hash pasties, two pork turnovers, and six assorted jam and fruit tarts, as well as a dozen apples. I have done my duty to her, though you haven't. You've left her alone all to-day—you ain't been near to jolly her up. She needs chinning, she does. I have had to step into your shoes and comfort her!"
"Oh, you have, have you?" returns Harry. "Thank you!"
"Well, I'm right glad you're grateful!" remarks Buck. "More so, perhaps, than she is, for when I asked her if she'd seen Brother Brigham at Salt Lake, and how she thought she'd like to be a Mormon—I always ask these questions of tourists coming from Salt Lake—she rose up, a kind of mixture of the Statue of Liberty and my old schoolmarm in Indianie, and said, 'Please continue your business tour at once!' So I got a move on, quick. The next time I passed by, her eyes were red, as if she'd been crying. I don't think you've been doing your duty, Cap!"
With this the boy goes on his way, leaving Lawrence rather elated at his information, for he shrewdly guesses that if Miss Travenion is in any very great trouble, she is more likely to call upon him than any one else to help her out of it. Knowing that she is well provisioned and taken care of, some hour or two after this, he having nothing else to do, goes to bed, something the other passengers have already done.
Next morning, looking out of the car window, Harry finds the snow deeper than ever, and still falling, and the train stalled more hopelessly than ever at the Aspen Y, now known on railroad maps as Tapioca.