"If I could keep out of the fireman's way, I should stand here," he
said.
"There is room on the seat here, I think, if you have not wholly
deserted me. Oh!"
"I didn't mean to desert you. It is because the snow is packing harder
that you are rocked more; the cab has really been riding very smoothly."
She moved forward on the box. "Are you going to sit down?"
"Thank you."
"Oh, don't thank me. I shall feel ever so much safer if you will." He
tried to edge up into the corner behind her, pushing the heavy cushion
up to support her back. As he did so she turned impatiently, but he
could not catch what she said. "Throw it away," she repeated. He
chucked the cushion forward below her feet and was about to sit up
where she had made room for him when the engineer put both hands to the
throttle-bar and shut off. For the first time since they had started
Gertrude saw him look around.
"Where's Point of Rocks?" he called to Glover as they slowed, and he
looked at his watch. "I'm afraid we're by."
"By?" echoed Glover.
"It looks so."
The fireman opened his furnace with a bang. The engineer got stiffly
down and straightened his legs while he consulted with Glover. Both
knew they had been running past small stations without seeing them, but
to lose Point of Rocks with its freight houses, coal chutes, and water
tanks!
They talked for a minute, the engineer climbed up to his seat, the
reverse lever was thrown over and they started cautiously back on a
hunt for the lost station, both straining their eyes for a glimpse of a
light or a building. For twenty minutes they ran back without finding
a solitary landmark. When they stopped, afraid to retreat farther,
Glover got out into the storm, walked back and forth, and, chilled to
the bone, plunged through the shallow drifts from side to side of the
right of way in a vain search for reckoning. Railroad men on the
rotary, the second day after, exploded Glover's torpedoes eleven miles
west of Point of Rocks, where he had fastened them that night to the
rails to warn the ploughs asked for when leaving Sleepy Cat.
With his clothing frozen he swung up into the cab. They were lost.
She could see his eyes now. She could see his face. Their perilous
state she could not understand, nor know; but she knew and understood
what she saw in his face and eyes--the resource and the daring. She
saw her lover then, master of the elements, of the night and the
danger, and her heart went out to his strength.
The three men talked together and the fireman asked the question that
none dared answer, "What about the ploughs?"