Suspense

The first trouble came on the main line in the Heart Mountains, and
Morris Blood, with the roadmaster of the sixth district and Benedict
Morgan, got after it with a crew together.

Between the C bridge and Potter's Gap 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.