Читать книгу The Fight on the Standing Stone - Lynde Francis - Страница 11

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Not wishing to jump from the frying-pan into the fire, Stannard took the precaution of reconnoitering before showing himself under the light of the mast-heads. The coast was clear, and, dropping to the ground, he crossed the gridironing of tracks quickly and climbed the slope to his log-built headquarters. Somewhere down among the bunk shacks a gang of Italian graders was singing around their night fire, carrying the note of incongruity which the arrival of the private-car party had struck to a still higher pitch in a measurably faultless rendering of a Verdi chorus, and the young chief, a music-lover to his finger-tips, stopped to listen for a moment. Then he turned shortly and entered the open door of the office-workroom; rather, let us say, he took the entering step over the threshold, only to fall back as if he had seen a ghost in the lighted interior.

The ghost was not only quite substantial; it was an exceedingly charming ghost, and it was sitting at ease in the engineer's desk chair, quietly nibbling the end of a pen-staff. "Come in and make yourself at home, Mr. Stannard," it said, with cheerful hospitality; this while the young chief of construction was hanging to either jamb of the door and striving as he might to get his feet once more upon the solid earth.

"You?" he managed to say, after a time. "For heaven's sake, how did you get here?"

"In my uncle's car, most of the way, and the rest of it on my own two little feet. Won't you come in and sit down?"

Stannard got in far enough to be able to put his back against the wall. In his wildest imaginings it had never occurred to him that Miss Anitra Westervelt might be a member of the private-car party, and he was making a desperate effort to readjust the imaginings as he stood looking down upon her.

There was a year and more lying between this night of astoundment and the days when he had neglected the committee meetings to play tennis with her on the country house lawn or to give her swimming lessons on the Sound shore, but the lapse of time had wrought no change save to make her more irresistibly attractive and alluring. Even the absurd little pot hat of the moment which covered her thick coils of copper-gold hair borrowed grace from her wearing of it; and the laughing brown eyes, the curve of the wilful lips, and the upthrust of the pretty chin were the same.

"You don't seem to be so very effervescently glad to see me," she remarked, after he had been dumb long enough to warrant another pin-prick. "I thought you would be, you know. That's why I made Eggie bring me over here. He has gone down to the Italians' camp with the others to hear the singing. I didn't want to hear it for fear it would make me homesick."

"Who is 'Eggie'?" Stannard demanded.

"When he's at home they call him the Honorable Egbert Adelbert Edward Montjoy, because he happens to be one of the several sons of Lord Earlingham. But over here we call him Eggie—just plain Eggie—and he rather likes it, I think. Why don't you sit down?"

Since she had the only chair in the room, he was obliged to perch himself upon Eddie Brant's high three-legged stool, and it put him at a gross disadvantage.

"I'm beginning to come to, a little," he laughed. "I hadn't the faintest idea that I was going to have you to reckon with in that private-car bunch over yonder."

"'To reckon with'?" she echoed. "Are we Egerians the kind of people who have to be 'reckoned with'?"

"I am afraid you are, in the present instance," he affirmed. "I've just been over to the car, having an interview with your honored and respected uncle. We didn't exactly come to blows, but—"

"I knew you wouldn't want us," she interrupted quite coolly. "I tried to get a bet out of Doc Billy, but he didn't have the courage of his convictions."

"And who might Doc Billy be?"

"If you are going to say 'who' like an owl every time I mention anybody—"

"That's because I haven't been introduced," he hastened to say. "How many of you are there?"

"Take us as we come, and I'll introduce you," was the prompt rejoinder. "First, there is Mrs. Grantham—Aunt Jeannette, we all call her, and she really is aunt to two of us. Mr. Vallory, who likes to say spiteful things, says she is fair, fat and fifty; but she's a dear just the same."

"We'll check off Mrs. Chaperone Grantham," said Stannard, doubling one little finger for the tally and wondering in the back part of his mind where and how and why his fit of bad temper had vanished so suddenly.

"Then there are the two Wetmore girls, Mrs. Grantham's nieces, you know. Una admits twenty-two but she's twenty-four if she's a day. If you like tall, willowy, graceful girls with nice hair and perfectly lovely gray eyes, and can put up with a good bit of refined contempt for everything west of the Allegheny Mountains, you'll fall in love with Una at first sight."

"Check," called Stannard, doubling another finger and adding: "I'm much too busy to fall in love with willowy people just at present. Who's next?"

"Una's sister Gladys. She says eighteen, but I happen to know to a certainty that it ought to be twenty-one. Did you ever see a real, sure-enough French bisque, Mr. Stannard? If you have, you'll know Gladys the moment you set eyes on her; china-blue eyes, hair like spun flax, peachy complexion and all that, you know—just the kind of girl that most men, at some time or other in their lives, fancy they'd like to play at housekeeping with."

"Not for mine," chuckled the stool-percher, reckless now of what the chaperone or Mr. Silas Westervelt or anybody else might think of this most unconventional tête-à-tête. "Any more eligible young ladies?"

"Not a single, solitary one, unless you want to count me in. We're a little shy in that respect, being only a crowd of amateur bear hunters; but we have plenty of men."

"I'm interested in men," Stannard averred. "Do we get Doc Billy first?"

"Not if we pay any attention to the Noble Order of the Self-important," was the mocking reply. "Monty Carroll easily heads that kind of a list. He is a rising young impressionist who does things in 'atmosphere' and has had two years in the Beaux Arts. If he could paint as well as he thinks he can, he'd be a second Corot."

"Say, I'm glad I'm not in your list," Stannard laughed happily, turning down a forefinger for the artist. "Who is the next man?"

"Make Eggie the thumb. He is charmingly British, big, handsome, and good-natured, and there isn't anybody in the world who enjoys a joke as he does—after it has been explained to him so that he can understand it. I suspect he's over here to marry money—Una's money, for example; or possibly mine, if he can't find any with a less formidable encumbrance."

Stannard winced a little at this. His acquaintance with Miss Anitra, while it had thriven like the weeds in a worn-out garden patch, had been all too brief. She had a level-eyed way of saying the most startling things, and he could never be quite sure of the point at which cool mockery ended and sober earnest began. Moreover, he had a feeling that, in the summer of committee meetings she had suffered him to climb to the place of familiarity chiefly for the reason that he was only an incident in her life, and that when he should move on and go about his legitimate business of building railroads there would be no awkward after-meetings or anti-climaxes. He was trying to figure himself as merely incidental to her again when he said:

"We'll pass up the hands-across-the-sea gentleman and shift to the other set of fingers. Have we reached Doc Billy yet?"

"Not yet. Mr. Adam Vansutter Padgett, being a member of the Stock Exchange, has a long lead over the medical profession. Roly-poly, round-faced, good-natured, hair thinning a little over the place where he thinks out his coups and corners. Gives you the impression that he is the sort of person who would tell you, upon the slightest provocation, the complete story of his life in one instalment. He wouldn't, though; that's only his pose. Down under the roly-poly bonhomie there is an exceedingly capable man of business. Past that, he happens to be the only man in the party who has ever killed big game."

Stannard craned his neck to get a glimpse campward through the open door. The Italians were still singing, and he hoped they would keep it up indefinitely.

"Now, I'm sure we must have reached Doc Billy," he suggested. "Let's see how near I can come to him on a chance shot: he is tall, thin and sort of hungry-looking; strokes his face and ponders you professionally when you ask him a simple little thing like 'Why is a woman?' or something of that sort: wears his hair long, and—"

Her laugh, silvery and almost boyish in its unrestraint, cut him short.

"How perfectly ridiculous!" she gasped; and then: "That's the traditional doctor you're describing, and Doctor William Pangborn Kitts smashes all the traditions into little tiny shards. He is as big and hard-muscled as you are; he played football on his college team, and is a man's man in every sense of the word—which is only another way of saying that most women fall in love with him at sight. He doesn't know what it is to be 'professional,' and when he laughs you'd think the roof was falling in."

"I've a hunch that I'm going to like Doc Billy," said Stannard. "Married or single?"

"Very much married, indeed. They're on their honeymoon—Doc Billy and his wife—and that brings us to the one other young woman, who isn't eligible merely because Doc Billy saw her first. Dolly Kitts is little and brown-eyed and quiet, and she thinks the sun rises and sets in William Pangborn. She has lots of money of her own, and she makes a haloed hero out of Billy because he won't give up his profession and be an idler. She isn't a little bit in love with the bear-hunting phase of things, but she makes believe she is merely because her husband is such a raving maniac on the outdoor life."

"Check for number seven," said Stannard. "Anybody else?"

"Nobody," was the short reply.

"Aha! my memory is better than yours. Didn't you speak of a Mr. Vallory who was fond of saying cynical things about nice old ladies? I used to know a man named Vallory once; he was in the class ahead of me at Illinois—a fellow who was capable enough to loaf through his college course and come out at the top, and still have time to mix up in more outside activities than you could count."

"If I made any mention of our Mr. Vallory, you may forget it, because I'm tired of cataloguing. Tell me about yourself. What have you been doing all these months and years?"

"It's only one year, and a part of another," Stannard corrected. "And as for doings, you rode over a good bit of them on the way here from Yellow Medicine. To-morrow, with the help of a little daylight, I can show you some of the others, if you care to see them."

"And the one altogether lovely?—has she been found yet?"

The young Missourian slid from his perch on the stool to stand with his back against the drawing table.

"Didn't I tell you a few minutes ago that I am too busy to fall in love?"

"You did, and it went in one ear and out the other. A man is never too busy to fall in love."

"You're quite sure of that, are you?"

"Perfectly sure. People tell us that sentiment is the whole of a woman's life, but only an incident in a man's. The part about a woman isn't necessarily true, but the other part is."

"Well, then: the one altogether lovely has been found and lost again. It was a sort of 'iridescent dream,' I guess. Anyhow, it wasn't even a possibility."

"So you woke up and rubbed your eyes and forgot it?"

"That's what I've been trying to make myself believe. It's the sensible thing, at least."

"There'll be a second choice some day," she asserted, half mockingly. "Wait until you have met Gladys Wetmore. She is the most adaptable person you ever saw."

Stannard drew out his watch and glanced at it surreptitiously under cover of his coat lapel. It was half-past nine, and the singing in the graders' camp had stopped. Through the open door he saw a straggling procession making its way across tracks toward the private-car. It was evident that Miss Anitra's companions had either forgotten her or had concluded that she had returned to the Egeria without them. There are times when the conventions, even for an Ozark mountaineer, die hard; and Stannard had a disquieting fear that Pearson or Patterson or somebody else might drift in and find them alone together.

"It's time you were going to bed," he announced abruptly. "Your people have all gone back to the car. I'll walk across the yard with you."

"So good of you, I'm sure," was the demure response, and as she rose to go with him: "It's years and years since anybody has been brave enough to tell me to stop talking and go to bed."

The young man who fancied he was responsible grinned broadly.

"I'm the boss in this camp, and what I say goes as it lies. But I'm not quite as brave as I ought to be. If I were, I should promptly couple an engine to your uncle's hotel-wagon over yonder and toddle it out of the Travois and back to Yellow Medicine."

"Why?" she demanded shortly.

"The reason I gave your uncle a little while ago when he sent for me was good enough: I told him that a working camp is no place for a picnic party."

She turned upon him with a flash of the brown eyes and a lift of the wilful chin. "That wasn't the real reason," she shot back smartly.

"Mr. Westervelt's reason for coming here and my reason for wishing him to go away may or may not be first cousins. Just the same, if I could think of any way to discourage him, I'd be glad."

"I like that," was the tart rejoinder. "Perhaps you imagine I am going to help you think of the way."

The young man laughed good-naturedly.

"I don't imagine for a moment that you would do anything you didn't want to do."

"I never do; at least not without knowing why I am supposed to be doing it."

They were out of the headquarters shack now and walking together down the slope toward the railroad tracks. There was no moonlight, but electric arcs are not such a bad substitute when the sentimental soil has been judiciously prepared beforehand.

"I don't want you to go away, and I am afraid to have you stay; that's the long and short of it," was the admission which the substitute moonlight finally wrung out of the young engineer.

The young woman at his side looked up quickly. "You are doing, or you are going to do, something that you don't want Uncle Silas to find out?" she queried.

"Oh, no; it's hardly that. But there is trouble ahead—trouble of the kind that might make it very unpleasant for a—for a picnic party. We are working a pretty rough lot of laborers, grade men and hard-rock 'gophers,' and any little jangle about pay, or hours, or anything of that sort, in a railroad camp is likely to mean rioting and violence. You see what I mean. The fellow whose job it is to have to man-handle such things any old day in the week is apt to be impatient of handicaps."

"I see," she said, with a touch of the Westervelt detachment. "You want me to tell Uncle Silas that I'm sick of the wilderness, and get the others to tell him so."

"When I am in my right mind that is exactly what I want."

"Are you in your right mind now?" she inquired innocently.

"No; I'm just foolish enough to feel like taking a chance and letting things rock along."

"I see," she nodded again. "You are discounting all the mean little things I've been saying about Gladys—or perhaps it's Una—and wondering if the time hasn't come for you to be thinking a little more pointedly about that second choice."

"Oh, am I?" he laughed; and then, the false moonlight getting in its work again: "There isn't going to be any second choice."

"Don't you believe it! There always is; and if the man would try half as hard the first time as he does the second—but never mind; do you really want me to work on Uncle Silas's sympathies?—he hasn't very many, you know." And then, breaking off suddenly; "Oh, look up there! What is that?"

They had crossed the gridironing of vacant tracks and were standing at the steps of the Egeria. Stannard wheeled quickly and saw that she was looking up at the sharply defined summit of the Standing Stone, the curiously detached and spire-like monolith in which the Dogtooth ended and which marked the entrance to the canyon and gave its name to the river. On the summit of the Stone a bright light was alternately flashing and disappearing.

Whatever explanation Stannard might have made was lost in a rather violent interruption. While they were still watching the mysterious signal flashings a big, black whiskered man, swearing under his breath and fiercely hurried, came tumbling out of the vestibule of the private car and narrowly missed falling upon them. It was Pearson, and he began on Stannard with no apparent regard for Stannard's companion.

"Been hunting all over the lot for you," he growled impatiently. "The tunnel roof's down again in the east heading, and this time we'll have a dead man for breakfast. The gophers are all out and swearing by all that's holy that they won't go back into the drift again with Truman as dynamite boss. Three or four of us had to fight like the devil to keep 'em from hanging Truman the first dash out o' the box!"

"Ring off, you fool!" gritted Stannard, out of the corner of his mouth. Then he turned and lifted the young woman, who had been listening, wide-eyed and shaken, to the vestibule step. "Don't let it tremble you up that way," he whispered. "It's only an accident, and they have to happen every once in so often on a job as big as this," and bidding her good-night, he joined Pearson in a swift run across the yard to the engine which the tunnel-driver had ordered out to rush them to the foot of the great mountain.