Читать книгу The Texan - James B. Hendryx - Страница 4

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"I don't see why they had to build their old railroad down in the bottom of this river bed." With deft fingers Alice Marcum caught back a wind-tossed whisp of hair. "It's like travelling through a trough."

"Line of the least resistance," answered her companion as he rested an arm upon the polished brass guard rail of the observation car. "This river bed, running east and west, saved them millions in bridges."

The girl's eyes sought the sky-line of the bench that rose on both sides of the mile-wide valley through which the track of the great transcontinental railroad wound like a yellow serpent.

"It's level up there. Why couldn't they have built it along the edge?"

The man smiled: "And bridged all those ravines!" he pointed to gaps and notches in the level sky-line where the mouths of creek beds and coulees flashed glimpses of far mountains. "Each one of those ravines would have meant a trestle and trestles run into big money."

"And so they built the railroad down here in this ditch where people have to sit and swelter and look at their old shiny rails and scraggly green bushes and dirt walls, while up there only a half a mile away the great rolling plains stretch away to the mountains that seem so near you could walk to them in an hour."

"But, my dear girl, it would not be practical. Railroads are built primarily with an eye to dividends and—" The girl interrupted him with a gesture of impatience.

"I hate things that are practical—hate even the word. There is nothing in all the world so deadly as practicability. It is ruthless and ugly. It disregards art and beauty and all the higher things that make life worth living. It is a monster whose god is dollars—and who serves that god well. What does any tourist know of the real West—the West that lies beyond those level rims of dirt? How much do you or I know of it? The West to us is a thin row of scrub bushes along a narrow, shallow river, with a few little white-painted towns sprinkled along, that for all we can see might be in Illinois or Ohio. I've been away a whole winter and for all the West I've seen I might as well have stayed in Brooklyn."

"But certainly you enjoyed California!"

"California! Yes, as California. But California isn't the West! California is New York with a few orange groves thrown in. It is a tourist's paradise. A combination of New York and Palm Beach. The real West lies east of the Rockies, the uncommercialized, unexploited—I suppose you would add, the unpractical West. A New Yorker gets as good an idea of the West when he travels by train to California as a Californian would get of New York were he to arrive by way of the tube and spend the winter in the Fritz-Waldmore."

"I rather liked California, what little I saw of it. A business trip does not afford an ideal opportunity for sight seeing."

"You like Newport and Palm Beach, too."

The man ignored the interruption.

"But, at least, this trip has combined a good bit of business with a very big bit of pleasure. It is two years since I have seen you and——"

"And so you're going to tell me for the twenty-sixth time in three days that you still love me, and that you want me to marry you, and I'll have to say 'no' again, and explain that I'm not ready to marry anybody." She regarded him with an air of mock solemnity. "But really Mr. Winthrop Adams Endicott I think you have improved since you struck out for yourself into the wilds of—where was it, Ohio, or some place."

"Cincinnati," answered the man a trifle stiffly. The girl shuddered. "I had to change cars there once." Again she eyed him critically. "Yes, two years have made a really noticeable improvement. Do the Cincinnati newspapers always remember to use your whole name or do they dare to refer to Winthrop A. Endicott. If I were a reporter I really believe I'd try it once. If you keep on improving, some day somebody is going to call you Win."

The man flushed: "Are you never serious?" he asked.

"Never more so than this minute."

"You say you are not ready to many. You expect to marry, then, sometime?"

"I don't expect to. I'm going to."

"Will you marry me when you are ready?"

The girl laughed. "Yes, if I can't find the man I want, I think I shall. But he must be somewhere," she continued, after a pause during which her eyes centred upon the point where the two gleaming rails vanished into the distance. "He must be impractical, and human, and—and elemental. I'd rather be smashed to pieces in the Grand Canyon, than live for ever on the Erie Canal!"

"Aren't you rather unconventional in your tastes——?"

"If I'm not, I'm a total failure! I hate conventionality! And lines of least resistance! And practical things! It is the men who are the real sticklers for convention. The same kind of men that follow the lines of least resistance and build their railroads along them—because it is practical!

"I don't see why you want to marry me!" she burst out resentfully. "I'm not conventional, nor practical. And I'm not a line of least resistance!"

"But I love you. I have always loved you, and——"

The girl interrupted him with a quick little laugh, which held no trace of resentment. "Yes, yes, I know. I believe you do. And I'm glad because really, Winthrop, you're a dear. There are lots of things about you I admire. Your teeth, and eyes, and the way you wear your clothes. If you weren't so terribly conventional, so cut and dried, and matter of fact, and safe, I might fall really and truly in love with you. But—Oh, I don't know! Here I am, twenty-three. And I suppose I'm a little fool and have never grown up. I like to read stories about knights errant, and burglars, and fair ladies, and pirates, and mysterious dark oriental-looking men. And I like to go to places where everybody don't go—only Dad won't let me and—— Why just think!" she exclaimed in sudden wrath, "I've been in California for three months and I've ridden over the same trails everybody else has ridden over, and motored over the same roads and climbed the same mountains, and bathed at the same beach, and I've met everybody I ever knew in New York, just as I would have met them in Newport or Palm Beach or in Paris or Venice or Naples for that matter!"

"But why go off the beaten track where everything is arranged for your convenience? These people are experienced travellers. They know that by keeping to the conventional routes——-"

"Winthrop Adams Endicott, if you say that word again I'll shriek! Or I'll go in from this platform and not speak to you again—ever! You know very well that there isn't a traveller among them. They're just tourists—professional goers. They do the same things, and say the same things, and if they could think, they'd think the same things every place they go. And I don't want things arranged for my convenience—so there!"

Winthrop Adams Endicott lighted a cigarette, brushed some white dust from his sleeve, and smiled.

"If I were a man and loved a girl so very, very much I wouldn't just sit around and grin. I'd do something!"

"But, my dear Alice, what would you have me do? I'm not a knight errant, nor a burglar, nor a pirate, nor a dark mysterious oriental—I'm just a plain ordinary business man and——"

"Well, I'd do something—even if it was something awful like getting drunk or shooting somebody. Why, if you even had a past you wouldn't be so hopeless. I could love a man with a past. It would show at least, that he hadn't followed the line of the least resistance. The world is full of canals—but there are only a few canyons. Look! I believe we're stopping! Oh, I hope it's a hold-up! What will you do if it is?" The train slowed to a standstill and Winthrop Adams Endicott leaned out and gazed along the line of the coaches.

"There is a little town here. Seems to be some commotion up ahead—quite a crowd. If I can get this blamed gate open we can go up and see what the trouble is."

"And if you can't get it open you can climb over and lift me down. I'm just dying to know what's the matter. And if you dare to say it wouldn't be conventional I'll—I'll jump!"