II
It was snowing, and snowing hard. Moreover, it had been snowing all night, and all the afternoon before. The wind rioted furiously over the broad Missouri plains, alternately building up huge castles of snow and throwing them down again like a fretful child; overtaking the belated teamster on his homeward journey, clutching him with its icy hand, and leaving him buried in a tomb more spotless than the fairest marble; howling, shrieking, racing madly to and fro, never out of breath, always the same tireless, pitiless, awful power. Rocks, fields, sometimes even forests were blotted out of the landscape. A mere hyphen upon the broad, white page, lay the Western-bound train. The fires in the locomotives (there were two of them), had been suffered to go out, and the great creatures waited silently together, left alone in the storm, while the snow drifted higher and higher upon their patient backs.
When Bob had waked that morning to find the tempest more furious than ever and the train stuck fast in a huge snow-bank, his first thought was of dismay at the possible detention in the narrow limits of the Pullman, which seemed much colder than it had before; his next was to wonder how the change of fortune would affect Gertrude Raymond. Of course he had long ago become acquainted with the brown traveling suit and fur collar. Of course there had been numberless little services for him to perform for her and the old gentleman, who had indeed proved to be her father. Bob had already begun to dread the end of the journey. He had gone to his berth the night before, wishing that San Francisco were ten days from Boston, instead of six. Providence having taken him at his word, and indicated that the journey would be of at least that duration, if not more, he was disposed, like no few of his fellow-mortals, to grumble.
Once more he became misanthropic. “There’s Miss Raymond, now,” he growled to himself, knocking his head savagely against the upper berth in his attempt to look out through the frosty pane, “sitting over across the aisle day after day with her kid gloves, and all that. Nice enough, of course,” recalling one or two spirited conversations where hours had slipped by like minutes, “but confoundedly useless, like the rest of ’em. If she were like mother, now, there’d be no trouble. She’d take care of herself. But as it is, the whole car will be turned upside down for her to-day, for fear she’ll freeze, or starve, or spoil her complexion, or something.”
Here Bob turned an extremely cold shoulder on the window, and having performed a sort of horizontal toilet, emerged from his berth, his hair on end, and his face expressive of utter defiance to the world in general, and contempt of fashionable young ladies in particular.
At that moment Miss Raymond appeared in the aisle, sweet and rosy as a June morning, her cheeks glowing, and her eyes sparkling with fun.
“Good-morning, Mr. Estabrook,” she said demurely, settling the fur collar about her neck.
