trude
laid aside her furs and threw open her jacket. Her hat she kept on,
and sitting in a deep chair told Glover of her father's arrival from
the East on Wednesday and explained how she had set her heart on
surprising him that evening at Medicine Bend. "Where are we now?" she
asked, as the rumble of the whirling trucks deepened.

"Entering Sleepy Cat Canyon, the Rat River----"

"Oh, I remember this. I ride on the platform almost every time I come
through here so I may see where you split the mountain. And every time
I see it I ask myself the same question. How came he ever to think of
that?"

It needed even hardly so much of an effort to lull her companion's
uneasiness. He was a man with no concern at best for danger, except as
to the business view of it, and when personally concerned in the hazard
his scruples were never deep. Not before had he seen or known Gertrude
Brock, for from that moment she gave herself to bewilderment and charm.

The great engine pulling them made so little of its load that they
could afford to forget the night; indeed, Gertrude gave him no moments
to reflect. From the quick play of their talk at the table she led him
to the piano. When, sitting down, she drew off her gloves. She drew
them off lazily. When he reminded her that she still had on her jacket
she did not look up, but leaning forward she studied the page of a song
on the rack, running the air with her right hand, while she slowly
extended her left arm toward him and let him draw the tight sleeve over
her wrist and from her shoulder. Then his attempt to relieve her of
the second sleeve she wholly ignored, slipping it lightly off and
pursuing the song with her left hand while she let the jacket fall in a
heap on the floor. By the time Glover had picked it up and she had
frowned at him she might safely have asked him, had the fancy struck
her, to head the engine for the peak of Sleepy Cat Mountain.

Half-way through a teasing Polish dance she stopped and asked suddenly
whether he had had any supper besides the sandwich; and refusing to
receive assurances forthwith abandoned the piano, rummaged the
staterooms and came back bearing in one hand a very large box of candy
and in the other a banjo. She wanted to hear the darky tunes he had
strummed at the desert campfire, and making him eat of the chocolates,
picked meantime at the banjo herself.

He was so hungry that unconsciously he despatched one entire layer of
the