CHAPTER XI
It was in the middle of the rainy season. Stepping out of his office, where he had just added a few drops of Scotch to the water he was absorbing at every pore, the station agent came face to face with the engineer of the down train.
“Nine hours late?” The engineer gruffly repeated the other’s comment. “We are lucky to be here at all. Besides being sopping wet, the wood we’re burning is that dosey it’d make a fireproof curtain for hell. This kind of railroading don’t suit my book, and I’m telling you that if they don’t serve us out something pretty soon that smells like wood I know one fat engineer that will be missing on this line.” Jerking his thumb at the lone passenger who had descended at the station, he added: “But for that chap we’d never have got through. When the track went out from under us at La Puente he pitched in and showed us no end of wrinkles. If you’ve got anything inside just give him a nip for me.”
“Hullo, Mr. Seyd!” Coming face to face with the passenger after the train had gone on, the agent thrust out his hand. “What a pity you weren’t on the other train. She was twenty hours late—in fact, only pulled out a couple of hours ago. Miss Francesca was aboard, and she just left.”
“Not alone?”
The agent laughed. “Sure! She don’t care. Three weeks ago she came galloping in through one of the heaviest rains and took the up train.”
“So she has been home since I left?”
“Let me see—that’s nigh on three months, isn’t it? Sure, she came home just after you left.”
With this bit of information lingering in the forefront of his mind Seyd, a little later, rode out from the station. Not that it engrossed, by any means, the whole of his thought. Even had he been free, the hard work and bitter disappointment of the first venture, and the equally hard thought and careful planning for the second during his long absence in the States, would have been sufficient to keep her in the background. If he had never happened to see Francesca again she would probably have lingered as an unusually pretty face in the gallery of his mind. While it was only natural that he should wonder if the news that he sent in by Caliban had ever reached her ear, it was merely a passing thought. His mind soon turned again to his plans. Up to the moment that, four hours later, he came slipping and sliding downhill upon her she was altogether out of his thought.