“He told you I was dead?”
“More'n a year ago! The last time I seen him! Before I went out to Leadville!”
“He told you I was dead,” repeated Marcia huskily. “He must have wished it!” she whispered. “Oh, mercy, mercy, mercy!” She stopped, and then she broke into a wild laugh: “Well, you see he was wrong. I'm on my way to him now to show him that I'm alive!”
XL.
Halleck woke at daybreak from the drowse into which he had fallen. The train was creeping slowly over the track, feeling its way, and he heard fragments of talk among the passengers about a broken rail that the conductor had been warned of. He turned to ask some question, when the pull of rising speed came from the locomotive, and at the same moment the car stopped with a jolting pitch. It settled upon the track again; but the two cars in front were overturned, and the passengers were still climbing from their windows, when Halleck got his bewildered party to the ground. Children were crying, and a woman was led by with her face cut and bleeding from the broken glass; but it was reported that no one else was hurt, and the trainmen gave their helplessness to the inspection of the rotten cross-tie that had caused the accident. One of the passengers kicked the decayed wood with his boot. “Well,” he said, “I always like a little accident like this, early; it makes us safe the rest of the day.” The sentiment apparently commended itself to popular acceptance; Halleck went forward with part of the crowd to see what was the matter with the locomotive: it had kept the track, but seemed to be injured somehow; the engineer was working at it, hammer in hand; he exchanged some dry pleasantries with a passenger who asked him if there was any chance of hiring a real fast ox-team in that neighborhood, in case a man was in a hurry to get on to Tecumseh.
They were in the midst of a level prairie that stretched all round to the horizon, where it was broken by patches of timber; the rising sun slanted across the green expanse, and turned its distance to gold; the grass at their feet was full of wild-flowers, upon which Flavia flung herself as soon as they got out of the car. By the time Halleck returned to them, she was running with cries of joy and wonder toward a windmill that rose beautiful above the roofs of a group of commonplace houses, at a little distance from the track; it stirred its mighty vans in the thin, sweet inland breeze, and took the sun gayly on the light gallery that encircled it.
A vision of Belgian plains swept before Halleck's eyes. “There ought to be storks on its roof,” he said, absently.
“How strange that it should be here, away out in the West!” said Olive.
“If it were less strange than we are, here, I couldn't stand it,” he answered.