Back to the Mountains

In the cottage in Boney Street, one year later, two women were waiting. It was ten o'clock at night.

"Isn't it a shame to be disappointed like this?" complained Dicksie, pushing her hair impatiently back. "Really, poor George is worked to death. He was to be in at six o'clock, Mr. Lee said, and here it is ten, and all your beautiful dinner spoiled. Marion, are you keeping something from me? Look me in the eye. Have you heard from Gordon Smith?"

"No, Dicksie."

"Not since he left the mountains a year ago?"

"Not since he left the mountains a year ago."

Dicksie, sitting forward in her chair, bent her eyes upon the fire. "It is so strange. I wonder where he is to-night. How he loves you, Marion! He told me everything when he said good-by. He made me promise not to tell then; but I didn't promise to keep it forever."

Marion smiled. "A year isn't forever, Dicksie."

"Well, it's pretty near forever when you are in love," declared Dicksie energetically. "I know just how he felt," she went on in a quieter tone. "He felt that all the disagreeable excitement and talk we had here then bore heaviest on you. He said if he stayed in Medicine Bend the newspapers never would cease talking and people never would stop annoying you--and you know George did say they were asking to have passenger trains held here just so people could see Whispering Smith. And, Marion, think of it, he actually doesn't know yet that George and I are married! How could we notify him without knowing where he was? And he doesn't know that trains are running up the Crawling Stone Valley. Mercy! a year goes like an hour when you're in love, doesn't it? George said he knew we should hear from him within six months--and George has never yet been mistaken excepting when he said I should grow to like the railroad business--and now it is a year and no news from him." Dicksie sprang from her chair. "I am going to call up Mr. Rooney Lee and just demand my husband! I think Mr. Lee handles trains shockingly every time George tries to get home like this on Saturday nights--now don't you? And passenger trains ought to get out of the way, anyway, when a division superintendent is trying to get home. What difference does it make to a passenger, I'd like to know, whether he is a few hours less or longer in getting to California or Japan or Manila or Hongkong or Buzzard's Gulch, provided he is safe--and you know there has not been an accident on the division for a year, Marion. There's a step now. I'll bet that's George!"