Night

Glover started. "The 1018?"

"She was to pull Six." The mountain man picked up the telephone, and
getting the operators, sent a rush message to Giddings. Leaving final
instructions with the two men he returned to the telegraph office.
When Giddings's protest about ordering a train out on such a night
came, Glover, who expected it, choked it back--assuming all
responsibility--gave no explanations and waited. When the orders came
he inspected them himself and returned to the car. Gertrude, in the
car alone, was drinking coffee from a hotel tray on the card table.
"It was very kind of you to send this in," she said, rising cordially.
"I had forgotten all about dinner. Have you succeeded?"

"Yes. Could you eat what they sent?"

"Pray look. I have left absolutely nothing and I am very grateful. Do
I not seem so?" she added, searchingly. "I want to because I am."

He smiled at her earnestness. Two little chairs were drawn up at the
table, and facing each other they sat down while Gertrude finished her
coffee and made Glover take a sandwich.

When the train conductor came in ten minutes later Glover talked with
him. While the men spoke Gertrude noticed how Glover overran the
dainty chair she had provided. She scrutinized his rough-weather garb,
the heavy hunting boots, the stout reefer buttoned high, and the
leather cap crushed now with his gloves in his hand. She had been
asking him where he got the cap, and a moment before, while her
attention wandered, he had told her the story of a company of Russian
noblemen and engineers from Vladivostok, who, during the summer, had
been his guests, nominally on a bear hunt, though they knew better than
to hunt bears in summer. It was really to pick up points on American
railroad construction. He might go, he thought, the following spring
to Siberia himself, perhaps to stay--this man that feared the wind--he
had had a good offer. The cap was a present.