Whereupon Brant, who was as yet innocent of the implied charge, took occasion to call the waiter who had served him and to fee him openly in sight of all and sundry. The man in the linen duster scowled his disapproval, but, inasmuch as his own breakfast was served, said nothing. There was a lull in the threatened storm, and Brant was still congratulating himself on his own magnanimity, when hostilities broke out afresh. His charge had finished her breakfast, and he had prevailed upon her to take a second cup of coffee. When it came, the man across the table, who had given a similar order, claimed it for his own. Brant expostulated, still in set terms exuding the very honey of forbearance. The tyrant of breakfast tables fell into the trap, mistook his man completely, and in a sharp volley of incivilities proved that a soft answer may not always deflect the course of righteous indignation. In the midst of the volley Miss Langford rose to leave the table.
That was the final straw, and it broke the back of Brant’s self-control. Rising quickly, he leaned across the table and smote the offender out of his chair; one open-handed blow it asked for, and it was given with red wrath to speed it. That done, he took the arm of his companion and stalked out of the dining room before the smitten one could gather breath for an explosion.
Brant marched his charge straight to the Pullman, drawing deep warrior breaths of defiance world-inclusive; but by the time they were halfway across the platform he came to his senses sufficiently to be heartily ashamed of himself; nay, more, to be ready to welcome anything which might come by way of reproach. But whatever Miss Langford thought of it, she was self-contained enough to keep her own counsel, and they boarded the train in silence. In the seclusion of the deserted sleeping car Brant laid fast hold of his courage and said what he might by way of apology.
“I can’t ask your forgiveness, Miss Langford,” he began; “I know I have put myself beyond that. But I beg you to let me say just one word in my own defence. For years I have been roughing it in these mountains, eating at tables where that man’s insolence would cost him his life before he could measure words with the mildest man in the camp. And so I forgot myself for the moment—forgot what was due you. Now I’ll make the only reparation I can, and keep out of your sight for the rest of the day.”
And straightway he vanished without giving her a chance to reply.
CHAPTER III
“THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS”
Having set himself to expiate his fault, Brant wore out the day in the smoking compartment in comfortless solitude, doing penance by limiting himself to one cigar an hour. It was dull work, but not altogether profitless. For one thing there was plenty of time to think; and for another the expiatory mill had a chance to grind out a goodly grist of conclusions. The first of these was that there were going to be more obstacles in the way to amendment than those interposed by an uncharitable world; that apart from the sharp fight on the firing line, he was likely to have trouble with an insubordinate garrison.
Now a fine scorn of obstacles was another of the lessons learned in the hard school of abandonment, and Brant set his teeth on a doughty resolution to override them in the race for retrieval, as he had overridden them in the mad gallop pitward. Self-respect, or some comforting measure of it, should be regained though the devil himself held the present reversion of it. There should yet come a day, please God, when he would not be constrained in common decency to put the length of a Pullman car between himself and a good woman. Moreover, the past should henceforth be a dead past, and woe betide the enemy, man or devil, who should have the temerity to resurrect it.
The gage of battle thus thrown to the powers of darkness was promptly taken up. After one of the many stops with the troublesome axle the rear brakeman came into the smoking compartment and sat down, as one weary. To begin at once the shedding of the churl shell of the master gambler, Brant nodded pleasantly; whereupon the brakeman passed the time of day and immediately began, railwaywise, to abuse his calling and to ease his mind in respect of the hot box.
“She never has made a run yet without keeping everybody on the keen jump,” he declared. “By gum! I’ve been chasing up and down with the dope kettle ever since one o’clock this morning.”