McNally tried to utter a protest, but she went on unheeding. “I think they're too absurdly comical for words. They try so hard to look as if they weren't spoiling for a fight.”
“Miss Porter,” said McNally, seriously, “your father's interests are at stake now and we must be discreet.”
“I suppose so,” she said; “but really those men are irresistibly funny.”
She gathered up the reins and the horses started, but as they moved away she turned and called back to him,—
“Be sure and come out to luncheon—that is, if you don't go to the front.”
The words troubled McNally. Only two days before he had been dragged out of his hiding-place in the Manchester station and kicked downstairs. This experience still occupied a large place in his thoughts, and he took Katherine's remark as a reflection on his personal courage. Though he had no idea of “going to the front,” he decided not to go to the Porters' for luncheon.
All that morning new people kept streaming into Truesdale. No. 22 brought in McDowell, a division superintendent on the C. & S.C. and other less important employees of the same road came in on every train. All over the city was the exciting premonition that something was going to happen. The army, as Katherine had called it, was reenforced by two fresh detachments brought in on the C. & S.C. from no one knew just where, but they were carefully guarded from being too much in evidence, and there was not the least disorder. When noon came and nothing had happened the tension relaxed a little, and the town returned to its accustomed quiet.
At the M. & T. station, however, the excitement increased, manifesting itself in many ways. The trains came in and went out on their scheduled time, and the routine work went on without variation, but there was a nervous alertness evident everywhere. Train crews stood in little knots about the platform and yards, speculating about the fight whose issue meant much to each of them, but in which they had not as yet been able to take a part. At one forty-five No. 14, which leaves Truesdale at two o'clock for Tillman City, St. Johns, and Manchester, backed down to the station to take on its passengers. Carse, the conductor, stood near the cab talking to the engineer and the fireman, keeping all the while an eye on the passengers.
“We're getting a big crowd to-day,” he observed. “That's McDowell of the C. & S.C. getting in the rear coach there. He's a mean brute. Ain't you glad we ain't under him, Downs?”
The engineer nodded emphatically, and climbing down from the cab, stood beside the conductor. “Seems to me,” he said, “there are a lot of C. & S.C. boys taking this train. I've spotted three or four already.”