they spent two days with a rotary
and a flanger and three consolidated engines and went home, leaving
everything swept clean, only to learn in the morning that west of the
gap there were four feet of fresh snow clear to Rozelle. From the
northern ranges came unusual reports of the continued severity of the
storms. It was hardly a series of storms, for that winter the first
storm that crossed the line lasted three weeks.

In the interval Bucks was holding to the directors at Medicine Bend,
waiting for the weather to settle enough to send them to the coast.
The Pittsburg party waited at Glen Tarn for Mr. Brock's word to join
him. At the Bend, Gertrude made love to her father, forfending the
awful moment of disclosure that must come, and the cause of her hidden
happiness and trouble strenuously made love to her.

To the joy of the conspirators, Bucks held Glover closely at
headquarters, keeping him closeted for long periods on the estimates
that were in final cooking for the directors; and so dense are great
people and so keen the simple, that Gertrude held her lone seat of
honor beside her father, at the table of the great financiers in the
dining-room, without the remotest suspicion on their parts that the
superb woman meeting them three times a day was carrying on a
proudly-hidden love affair with the muscular, absorbed-looking man who
sat alone across the aisle.

But the asthmatic old pastry cook, who weighed at least two hundred and
thirty pounds and had not even seen the inside of the dining-room for
three years, was thoroughly posted on every observable phase of the
affair down to the dessert orders; and no one acquainted with the frank
profanity of a mountain meat cook will doubt that the best of
everything went hot from the range to Glover and Gertrude. Dollar tips
and five-dollar tips from Eastern epicures could not change this, for
the meals were served by waitresses who felt a personal responsibility
in the issue of the pretty affair of the heart.

The whole second floor of the little hotel had been reserved for the
directors' party, and among the rooms was the parlor. There Glover
called regularly every evening on Mr. Brock, who, somewhat at a loss to
understand the young man's interest, excused himself after the first
few minutes and left Gertrude to entertain the gentleman who had been
so kind to everybody that she could not be discourteous even if he was
somewhat tedious.

One night after a part