"I get you." Nelson pulled down a map which was rolled against the side of the car. He studied the maze of lines and dots and dashes. "Going along with us?" he had asked casually.
"The surest thing you know." Steve remembered how absurdly light-hearted he had felt. Nelson looked so thoroughly equal to his job.
"Then you'd better—now what the devil is that?" he growled as the engine blew a furious warning and the brakes ground on with a suddenness which threw both men against the desk. "We can't have reached Devil's Hold-up yet."
And then—Courtlandt's crowding thoughts had reached the moment when he had heard a girl's voice say:
"Don't scold, Mr. Brakeman. It was reckless—but—but, you see, we had to flag this train—we—we want to go to the coast. We're—we're eloping!"
Jerry and Greyson! And he would have staked his life that she was true blue, that even if she felt that she could never love the man she had married she would have trampled temptation. The intolerable ache in Steve's heart maddened him. She should not carry out this mad plan. He wouldn't let her go if she hated him eternally. He'd make her love him, love him as he had loved her from the moment he had looked up to see her enter the living-room of Glamorgan's apartment. He had been so infernally proud that he had tortured himself by pretending indifference and now he had been brutal. He should have let her explain—he'd go now and listen to what she had to say. God help him to act the man no matter what it was. He would be tender, he would be sympathetic—but—he'd never give her up.
Nelson entered and closed the door softly behind him. His face was white, there were tiny flecks of foam on his lips, his eyes blazed.
"In five minutes we'll slow down to a crawl before entering Devil's Hold-up. The bandits counted on that. I'll go forward to the cab. Trail along after me. Leave your holster here. The passengers mustn't get the idea that we're packing guns; get me?"
"I get you. Where is Gr—where is the man who flagged the train?"
Nelson turned with his hand on the door-knob.