At midnight when he boarded the train he made his way back to look for a place to stretch out until two o'clock.
The Pullman conductor lay in the smoking-room of the head 'Frisco car dreaming of his salary—too light to make any impression on him except when asleep. It seemed a pity to disturb an honest man's dreams, and the engineer passed on. In the smoking-room of the next car lay a porter asleep. Glover dropped his bag into a chair and took off his coat. While he was washing his hands the train-conductor, Billy O'Brien, came in and set down his lantern. Conductor O'Brien was very much awake and inclined rather to talk over a Mexican mining proposition on which he wanted expert judgment than to let Glover get to bed. When the sleepy man looked at his watch for the fifth time, the conductor was getting his wind for the dog-watch and promised to talk till daylight.
"My boy, I've got to go to bed," declared Glover.
"Every sleeper is loaded to the decks," returned O'Brien. "This is the most comfortable place you'll find."
"No, I'll go forward into the chair-car," replied Glover. "Good-night."
"Stop, Mr. Glover; if you're bound to go, the Lalla Rookh car right behind this is dead, but there's steam on. Go into the stateroom and throw yourself on the couch. This is the porter here asleep."
"William, your advice is good. I've taken it too long to disregard it now," said Glover, picking up his bag. "Good-night."
But it was not a good night; it was a bad night, and getting worse as Number One dipped into it. Out of the northwest it smoked a ragged, wet fog down the pass, and, as they climbed higher, a bitter song from the Teton way heeled the sleepers over the hanging curves and streamed like sobs through the meshed ventilators of the Lalla Rookh. It was a nasty night for any sort of a sleeper; for a dead one it was very bad.
Glover walked into the Lalla Rookh vestibule, around the smoking-room passage, and into the main aisle of the car, dimly lighted at the hind end. He made his way to the stateroom. The open door gave him light, and he took off his storm-coat, pulled it over him for a blanket, and had closed his eyes when he reflected he had forgotten to warn O'Brien he must get off at Medicine Bend.
It was unpleasant, but forward he went again to avoid the annoyance of being carried by. He could tell as he came back, by the swing, that they were heading the Peace River curves, for the trucks were hitting the elevations like punching-bags. Just as he regained the main aisle of the Lalla Rookh, a lurch of the car plumped him against a section-head. He grasped it an instant to steady himself, and as he stopped he looked. Whether it was that his eyes fell on the curtained section swaying under the Pintsch light ahead—Section Eleven made up—or whether his eyes were drawn to it, who can tell? A woman's head was visible between the curtains. Glover stood perfectly still and stared. Without right or reason, there certainly stood a woman.