"Why, that's nothing. You got me my first run on this division. I'd pull you to hell if you said so."
Glover turned to the night foreman. "What's the best engine in the house?"
"There's the 1018 with steam and a plough."
Glover started. "The 1018?"
"She was to pull Six." The mountain man picked up the telephone, and getting the operators, sent a rush message to Giddings. Leaving final instructions with the two men he returned to the telegraph office. When Giddings's protest about ordering a train out on such a night came, Glover, who expected it, choked it back—assuming all responsibility—gave no explanations and waited. When the orders came he inspected them himself and returned to the car. Gertrude, in the car alone, was drinking coffee from a hotel tray on the card table. "It was very kind of you to send this in," she said, rising cordially. "I had forgotten all about dinner. Have you succeeded?"
"Yes. Could you eat what they sent?"
"Pray look. I have left absolutely nothing and I am very grateful. Do I not seem so?" she added, searchingly. "I want to because I am."
He smiled at her earnestness. Two little chairs were drawn up at the table, and facing each other they sat down while Gertrude finished her coffee and made Glover take a sandwich.
When the train conductor came in ten minutes later Glover talked with him. While the men spoke Gertrude noticed how Glover overran the dainty chair she had provided. She scrutinized his rough-weather garb, the heavy hunting boots, the stout reefer buttoned high, and the leather cap crushed now with his gloves in his hand. She had been asking him where he got the cap, and a moment before, while her attention wandered, he had told her the story of a company of Russian noblemen and engineers from Vladivostok, who, during the summer, had been his guests, nominally on a bear hunt, though they knew better than to hunt bears in summer. It was really to pick up points on American railroad construction. He might go, he thought, the following spring to Siberia himself, perhaps to stay—this man that feared the wind—he had had a good offer. The cap was a present.
The two men went out and she was left alone. A flagman, hat in hand, passed through the car. The shock of the engine coupler striking the buffer hardly disturbed her reverie; for her the night meant too much.