It was a sad, strange place to find Toppy Treplin, one-time All-American halfback, but for the last four years all-around moneyed loafer and waster. Rail Head was far from the beaten path. It lay at the end of sixty miles of narrow-gauge track that rambled westward into the Big Woods from the Iron Range Railroad line, and it consisted mainly of a box-car depot, an alleged hotel and six saloons—none of the latter being in any too good repute with the better element round about.
The existence of the saloons might have explained Toppy’s presence in Rail Head had their character and wares been of a nature to attract one of his critical tastes; but in reality Toppy was there because the Iron Range Limited, bearing Harvey Duncombe’s private hunting-car, had stopped for a moment the night before out where the narrow-gauge met the Iron Range Railroad tracks.
Toppy, at that fated moment, was out on the observation platform alone. There had been a row and Toppy had rushed out in a black rage. Within, the car reeked with the mingled odours of cigarette-smoke and spilled champagne. Out of doors the first snowfall of the season, faintly tinted by a newly risen moon, lay unmarked, undefiled.
A girl—small, young, brisk and business-like—alighted from the car ahead and walked swiftly across the station platform to the narrow-gauge train that stood waiting. The anger and champagne raging in him had moved Toppy to one of those wild pranks which had made his name among his fellows synonymous with irresponsibility.
He would get away from it all, away from Harvey Duncombe and his champagne, and all that sort of thing. He would show them!
Toppy had stepped off. The Limited suddenly glided away. Toppy lurched over to the narrow gauge, and that was the last thing he had remembered of that memorable night.
As the sun now revealed him, Mr. Robert Lovejoy Treplin, in spite of his deplorable condition, was a figure to win attention of a not entirely unfavourable sort. Still clad in mackinaw and hunting-clothes, his two hundred pounds of bone and muscle and just a little too much fat were sprawled picturesquely over the chair and table, the six-foot gracefulness of him being obvious despite his rough apparel and awkward position.
His cap had fallen off and the sun glinted on a head of boyish brown curls. It was only in the lazy, good-natured face, puffy and loose-lipped, that one might read how recklessly Toppy Treplin had lived since achieving his football honours four years before.
The sun crept up and found his eyes, and Toppy stirred. Slowly, even painfully, he raised his head from the table and looked around him. The crudeness of his surroundings made him sit up with a start. He looked first out of the window at the snow-covered “street.” Across the way he saw a small, unpainted building bearing a scraggly sign, “Hotel.” Beyond this the jack-pines loomed in a solid wall.
Toppy shuddered. He turned his face toward the man behind the bar, who had been regarding him for some time with a look of mingled surprise and amusement. Toppy shuddered again.