“She’ll sure answer this one, but then I’ll say I’ve changed my mind and have decided that I ain’t going to marry. Takes me really for a man, she does. Must be a fool, she must. And she ain’t asked for money, ain’t that funny? If she writes back she’ll abuse me like a pickpocket, anyway. Won’t he be mad when he gets the letter!”
Sophy’s general knowledge of postal matters and of some of the more familiar rules of law warned her that she was skating on thin ice. Yet her last letter had ventured rather far. In her first letter she had merely signed with the initials, but this time she had boldly used Hugo Ennis’s name. She thought she would escape all danger of having committed a forgery by simply printing the letters.
“And besides, there ain’t any one can tell I ever wrote those letters,” she reassured herself, perhaps mistakenly. “If there’s ever any enquiry I’ll stick to it that some one just dropped them in the mail-box and I forwarded them as usual. When it comes to her answers they’ll all be in Box 17, unopened, and I can say I held them till called for, according to rules. I never referred to them in 35 what I wrote. Just told her to come along and promised her all sorts of things.”
Again she waited impatiently for an answer, which never came. Instead of it there was a telegram addressed to Hugo Ennis, which was of course received by Follansbee, the station agent, who read it with eyes rather widely opened. He transcribed the message and entrusted it to big Stefan, the Swede, who now carried mail to a few outlying camps.
“It’s a queer thing, Stefan,” commented Joe. “Looks like there’s some woman comin’ all the way from New York to see yer friend Hugo.”
“Vell, dat’s yoost his own pusiness, I tank,” answered the Swede, placidly.
“Sure enough, but it’s queer, anyways. Did he ever speak of havin’ some gal back east?”
“If he had it vould still be his own pusiness,” asserted Stefan, biting off a chew from a black plug and stowing away the telegram in a coat pocket. Hugo Ennis was his friend. Anything that Hugo did was all right. Folks who had anything to criticize in his conduct were likely to incur Stefan’s displeasure.
The big fellow’s dog-team was ready. At his word they broke the runners out of the 36 snow, barking excitedly, but for the time being they were only driven across the way to the post-office for the mail-bag.
Sophy handed the pouch to him, her face none too agreeable.