“You certainly have a kick coming,” he admitted. “A big one, at that. I’ll look into this myself, and if you’ll please return at four I hope to have news of your freight.”
In their passage down through the departments, however, his inquiries soon came to a stop. “So this is the fellow who has been bucking old General Garcia in the Barranca de Guerrero?” he commented to his third assistant; and his further remarks were equally enlightening. “Well, politics are politics, but this has gone far enough. I like the boy’s looks, and this railroad isn’t going to be used to fight the General’s battles any longer. After this, Mr. Chauvez, see that Mr. Seyd gets his freight. Where is that last car?”
The third assistant’s shoulders executed the Latin equivalent of “Search me!” At last news, peon “brakies” on the Nacional had been using it as a roller coaster on the mountain grades going down to Monterey. If Providence had intervened before it ran off into the sea Mr. Chauvez opined that it would most likely be found on that city’s wharves. All of which, after some clicking and humming of wires, culminated in the manager’s report to Seyd at four.
“It seems that your freight was switched by mistake over to Monterey. If you leave it to us”—his stern eye loosed a twinkle—“you’ll probably get it sometime in the next six months. But if you’ll take these passes for the evening train and hunt it up yourself you can have it tagged onto the train that leaves to-morrow night.”
Though the vicissitudes of thirty years’ railroading had almost petrified his heart, the organ stirred faintly as Seyd returned hearty thanks. Watching him go out, he even muttered: “It’s a damned shame! But I’ll take care that he’s bothered no more.”
More grateful on his part than he had any legal right to be, Seyd would have been better pleased had the passes read to Vera Cruz. Knowing that Francesca must pass through Mexico City on her way home, he would have preferred even to stay where he was. But the thought of Billy fretting himself thin at the mine reinforced his naturally strong sense of duty, and he took the train out that night. And his steadfastness made for his good. During his three days’ absence the flame of feeling which was consuming his resolution and blinding his thought burned itself out. The morning after he had seen his car billed through to his own station he rose with his mind clear and a renewed purpose to do the right thing.
“At the first favorable opportunity I shall tell her,” he told himself, in the coach going down to the station. With the thought strong in his mind he stepped on the train and—came face to face with Francesca herself.
“Oh! it is you!”
“I—I—thought you were already gone!”
While he blushed and stammered confusedly his senses, nevertheless, took cognizance of the fluttering rush of her hands, the happy eyes in the midst of her flushes, other things that answered, without words, several questions which had greatly perplexed him. Whatever the cause behind her long silence, it was neither the resurrection of her racial pride nor, as he had sometimes suspected, her discovery of his marriage. Indeed, her very next words gave him an inkling.