Zebulon Kingsley home ahead of schedule!
I stood on the car steps, getting my breath, giving dizzy thought to the peril I had so narrowly missed. Zebulon Kingsley back in Levant ahead of me, viewing his desolated wood-lot and voicing his fury! Where would my character and importance land after that blow-up?
Did I say that my dizzy thoughts dealt with a peril I had missed? In about ten seconds I decided that I was traveling right along with the peril. I was doomed to drop into Levant in its company.
I might have been mistaken, I reflected. I hoped I had been deceived by a too-hasty glance. I walked down through the train. I was pretty sure of my man when I passed him, though I got a view of the back of his head only. Therefore I went to the front of the car, making an excuse of the water-cooler. I looked back at him while I drank. He seemed to be asleep, for his head was bent down into the folds of the cape he had pulled about his ears. I was so sure he was asleep that when I went back up the car I gave him a bold look to convince myself I had not been mistaken.
I got one of the starts of my life!
Zebulon Kingsley was distinctly not asleep. His eyes were like fire-balls, and he stared straight at me without one flicker of the lids or crinkle of the countenance to show that he recognized me. His face was gray and haggard. He was like a stone man. If he had given one hint by his expression that he knew me I would have pushed myself in beside him, I reckon, and would have come across with my little story. But that frozen face was too much for me. I was doing a lot of guessing about his state of mind, and my guesses warned me to stay away from him just then.
I hurried past and sat down in the first vacant seat.
The feeling I had was that he had found out by letter from home or somehow what kind of a trick I had cut up. Those glaring eyes hinted at unutterable things. He must be in such a fury, I thought, that words had failed him. He was waiting until he stepped foot in Levant to go at me in proper style. Naturally, he would not start anything on a railroad train. I sat there while those, thoughts flamed up in me like fire in a brush-heap, and for a long time I found no handy extinguisher for those thoughts.
However, there was a rather comforting packet in the breast pocket of my frock-coat; I got out those contracts and went over them carefully.
I did have some visible emblems of success to stick up in front of his sour face when it came to a showdown. But if Zebulon Kingsley was not willing to start anything in public on a train, neither was I. I studied my contracts, added figures, and tried to keep my mind off the big trouble ahead. But who has ever sat near a bomb with a sputtering fuse and felt in a mood for philosophy? I couldn’t even add figures!