"Good-by, Enoch! I truly hope you'll enjoy the trip. Run now, or you'll miss the train. See, Mr. Seaton's far down the platform!"
Nucky turned and ran. Mr. Seaton waited for him at the door of the Pullman. His jaw was set and he looked at Nucky with curiosity not untinged with resentment. Nucky had not melted after a whole day with Mary! Perhaps there were no deeps within the boy. But as the train moved through the tunnel something lonely back of the boy's hard stare touched him and he smiled.
"Well, Enoch, old man, are you glad to go?"
"I dunno," replied Nucky.
CHAPTER II
BRIGHT ANGEL
"I was sure, when I was eighteen, that if I could but give to the world a picture of Boyhood, flagellated by the world's stupidity and brutality, the world would heed. At thirty, I gave up the hope."—Enoch's Diary.
No one could have been a less troublesome traveling companion than Nucky. He ate what was set before him, without comment. He sat for endless hours on the observation platform, smoking cigarettes, his keen eyes on the flying landscape. His blue Norfolk suit and his carefully chosen cap and linen restored a little of the adolescent look of which the flashy clothing of his own choosing had robbed him. No one glanced askance at Mr. Seaton's protegé or asked the lawyer idle questions regarding him.
And yet Nucky was very seldom out of John Seaton's thoughts: Over and over he tried to get the boy into conversation only to be checked by a reply that was half sullen, half impertinent. Finally, the lawyer fell back on surmises. Was Nucky laying some deep scheme for mischief when they reached San Francisco? John had believed fully that he and Nucky would be friends before Chicago was passed. But he had been mistaken. What in the world was he to do with the young gambler in San Francisco, that paradise of gamblers? He could employ a detective to dog Nucky, but that was to acknowledge defeat. If there were only some place along the line where he could leave the boy, giving him a taste of out of door life, such as only the west knows!
For a long time Seaton turned this idea over in his mind. The train was pulling out of Albuquerque when he had a sudden inspiration. He knew Nucky too well by now to ask him for information or for an expression of opinion. But that night, at dinner, he said, casually,