"You might have to come too far. We shall start in a few days."
"Will you telegraph me?"
"If you wish me to."
Eight days later, when suspense had grown sullen and Glover had parted with all hope of hearing from her, he heard. In the depths of the Heart River range her message reached him.
Every day Giddings, hundreds of miles away at the Wickiup, had had his route-list. Giddings, who would have died for the engineer, waited, every point in the repeating covered, day after day for a Glen Tarn message that Glover expected. For four days Glover had hung like a dog around the nearer stretches of the division. But the season was advanced, he dared not delegate the last vital inspection of the year, and bitterly he retreated from shed to shed until he was buried in the barren wastes of the eighth district.
The day in the Heart River mountains is the thin, gray day of the alkali and the sage. On Friday afternoon Glover's car lay sidetracked at the east end of the Nine Mile shed waiting for a limited train to pass. The train was late and the sun was dropping into an ashen strip of wind clouds that hung cold as shrouds to the north and west when the gray-powdered engine whistled for the siding.
Motionless beside the switch Glover saw down the gloom of the shed the shoes wringing fire from the Pullman wheels, and wondered why they were stopping. The conductor from the open vestibule waved to him as the train slowed and ran forward with the message.
"Giddings wired me to wait for your answer, Mr. Glover," said the conductor.
Glover was reading the telegram:
"I may start Saturday.