The Blind Man's Eyes Part 5

Presently he began to feel the train beginning to labor with the increasing grade and the deepening snow. It was well across the State line and into Idaho; it was nearing the mountains, and the weather was getting colder and the storm more severe. Eaton lifted the curtain from the window beside him and leaned on one elbow to look out. The train was running through a bleak, white desolation; no light and no sign of habitation showed anywhere. Eaton lay staring out, and now the bleak world about him seemed to a.s.sume toward him a cruel and merciless aspect. The events of the day ran through his mind again with sinister suggestion. He had taken that train for a certain definite, dangerous purpose which required his remaining as obscure and as inconspicuous as possible; yet already he had been singled out for attention. So far, he was sure, he had received no more than that--attention, curiosity concerning him. He had not suffered recognition; but that might come at any moment. Could he risk longer waiting to act?

He dropped on his back upon the bed and lay with his hands clasped under his head, his eyes staring up at the roof of the car.

In the card-room of the observation car, playing and conversation still went on for a time; then it diminished as one by one the pa.s.sengers went away to bed. Connery, looking into this car, found it empty and the porter cleaning up; he slowly pa.s.sed on forward through the train, stopping momentarily in the rear Pullman opposite the berth of the pa.s.senger whom President Jarvis had commended to his care. His scrutiny of the car told him all was correct here; the even breathing within the berth a.s.sured him the pa.s.senger slept.

Connery went on through to the next car and paused again outside the berth occupied by Eaton. He had watched Eaton all day with results that still he was debating with himself; he had found in a newspaper the description of the man who had waited at Warden's, and he reread it, comparing it with Eaton. It perfectly confirmed Connery's first impression; but the more Connery had seen of Eaton, and the more he had thought over him during the day, the more the conductor had become satisfied that either Eaton was not the man described or, if he was, there was no harm to come from it. After all, was not all that could be said against Eaton--if he was the man--simply that he had not appeared to state why Warden was befriending him? Was it not possible that he was serving Warden in some way by not appearing? Certainly Mr.

Dorne, who was the man most on the train to be considered, had satisfied himself that Eaton was fit for an acquaintance; Connery had seen what was almost a friends.h.i.+p, apparently, spring up between Eaton and Dorne's daughter during the day.

The conductor went on, his shoulders brus.h.i.+ng the b.u.t.toned curtains on both sides of the narrow aisle. Except for the presence of the pa.s.senger in the rear sleeper, this inspection was to the conductor the uttermost of the commonplace; in its monotonous familiarity he had never felt any strangeness in this abrupt and intimate bringing together of people who never had seen one another before, who after these few days of travel together, might probably never see one another again, but who now slept separated from one another and from the persons pa.s.sing through the cars by no greater protection than these curtains designed only to s.h.i.+eld them from the light and from each other's eyes. He felt no strangeness in this now. He merely a.s.sured himself by his scrutiny that within his train all was right. Outside--

Connery was not so sure of that; rather, he had been becoming more certain hour by hour all through the evening, that they were going to have great difficulty in getting the train through. Though he knew by President Jarvis' note that the officials of the road must be watching the progress of this especial train with particular interest, he had received no train-orders from the west for several hours. His inquiry at the last stop had told him the reason for this; the telegraph wires to the west had gone down. To the east, communication was still open, but how long it would remain so he could not guess. Here in the deep heart of the great mountains--they had pa.s.sed the Idaho boundary-line into Montana--they were getting the full effect of the storm; their progress, increasingly slow, was broken by stops which were becoming more frequent and longer as they struggled on. As now they fought their way slower and slower up a grade, and barely topping it, descended the opposite slope at greater speed as the momentum of the train was added to the engine-power, Connery's mind went back to the second sleeper with its single pa.s.senger, and he spoke to the Pullman conductor, who nodded and went toward that car. The weather had prevented the expected increase of their number of pa.s.sengers at Spokane; only a few had got aboard there; there were worse grades ahead, in climbing which every pound of weight would count; so Connery--in the absence of orders and with Jarvis' note in his pocket--had resolved to drop the second sleeper.

At Fracroft--the station where he was to exchange the ordinary plow which so far had sufficed, and couple on the "rotary" to fight the mountain drifts ahead--he swung himself down from the train, looked in at the telegraph office and then went forward to the two giant locomotives, on whose sweating, monstrous backs the snow, suddenly visible in the haze of their lights, melted as it fell. He waited on the station platform while the second sleeper was cut out and the train made up again. Then, as they started, he swung aboard and in the brightly lighted men's compartment of the first Pullman checked up his report-sheets with a stub of pencil. They had stopped again, he noticed; now they were climbing a grade, more easily because of the decrease of weight; now a trestle rumbled under the wheels, telling him just where they were. Next was the powerful, steady push against opposition--the rotary was cutting its way through a drift.

Again they stopped--once more went on. Connery, having put his papers into his pocket, dozed, awoke, dozed again. The snow was certainly heavy, and the storm had piled it up across the cuts in great drifts which kept the rotary struggling almost constantly now. The progress of the train halted again and again; several times it backed, charged forward again--only to stop, back and charge again and then go on. But this did not disturb Connery. Then something went wrong. All at once he found himself, by a trainman's instinctive and automatic action, upon his feet; for the shock had been so slight as barely to be felt, far too slight certainly to have awakened any of the sleeping pa.s.sengers in their berths. He went to the door of the car, lifted the platform stop, threw open the door of the vestibule and hanging by one hand to the rail, swung himself out from the side of the car to look ahead. He saw the forward one of the two locomotives wrapped in clouds of steam, and men arm-deep in snow wallowing forward to the rotary still further to the front, and the sight confirmed fully his apprehension that this halt was more important and likely to last much longer than those that had gone before.

CHAPTER V

ARE YOU HILLWARD?

It is the wonder of the moment of first awakening that one--however tried or troubled he may be when complete recollection returns--may find, at first, rehearsal of only what is pleasant in his mind. Eaton, waking and stretching himself luxuriously in his berth in the reverie halfway between sleep and full consciousness, found himself supremely happy. His feelings, before recollection came to check them, reminded him only that he had been made an acquaintance, almost a friend, the day before, by a wonderful, inspiring, beautiful girl. Then suddenly, into his clearing memory crushed and crowded the reason for his being where he was. By an instinctive jerk of his shoulders, almost a shudder, he drew the sheet and blanket closer about him; the smile was gone from his lips; he lay still, staring upward at the berth above his head and listening to the noises in the car.

The bell in the washroom at the end of the car was ringing violently, and some one was reinforcing his ring with a stentorian call for "Porter! Porter!"

Eaton realized that it was very cold in his berth--also that the train, which was standing still, had been in that motionless condition for some time. He threw up the window curtain as he appreciated that and, looking out, found that he faced a great unbroken bank of glistening white snow as high as the top of the car at this point and rising even higher ahead. He listened, therefore, while the Englishman--for the voice calling to the porter was his--extracted all available information from the negro.

"Porter!" Standish called again.

"Yessuh!"

"Close my window and be quick about it!"

"It's closed, suh."

"Closed?"

"Yessuh; I shut it en-durin' the night."

"Closed!" the voice behind the curtains iterated skeptically; there was a pause during which, probably, there was limited exploration. "I say, then, how cold is it outside?"

"Ten below this morning, suh."

"What, what? Where are we?"

"Between Fracroft and Simons, suh."

"Yet?"

"Yessuh, yit!"

"Hasn't your silly train moved since four o'clock?"

"Moved? No, suh. Not mo'n a yahd or two nohow, suh, and I reckon we backed them up again."

"That foolish snow still?"

"Yessuh; and snow some more, suh."

"But haven't we the plow still ahead?"

"Oh, yessuh; the plow's ahaid. We still got it; but that's all, suh.

It ain't doin' much; it's busted."

"Eh--what?"

"Yessuh--busted! There was right smart of a slide across the track, and the crew, I understands, diagnosed it jus' fo' a s...o...b..nk and done bucked right into it. But they was rock in this, suh; we's layin'

right below a hill; and that rock jus' busted that rotary like a Belgium sh.e.l.l hit it. Yessuh--pieces of that rotary essentially scattered themselves in four directions besides backwards and fo'wards.

We ain't done much travelin' since then."

"Ah! But the restaurant car's still attached?"

"De restaur--oh, yessuh. We carries the diner through--from the Coast to Chicago."

"H'm! Ten below! Porter, is that wash-compartment hot? And are they serving breakfast yet?"

"Yessuh; yessuh!"

The Briton, from behind his curtains, continued; but Eaton no longer paid attention.

"Snowed in and stopped since four!" The realization startled him with the necessity of taking it into account in his plans. He jerked himself up in his berth and began pulling his clothes down from the hooks; then, as abruptly, he stopped dressing and sat absorbed in thought. Finally he parted the curtains and looked out into the aisle.

The Englishman, having elicited all he desired, or could draw, from the porter, now bulged through his curtains and stood in the aisle, unabashed, in gaudy pajamas and slippers, while he methodically bundled his clothes under his arm; then, still garbed only in pajamas, he paraded majestically to the washroom. The curtains over the berths at the other end of the car also bulged and emitted the two dark-haired girls. They were completely kimono-ed over any temporary deficiency of attire and skipped to the drawing-room inhabited by their parents. The drawing-room door instantly opened at Amy's knock, admitted the girls and shut again. Section Seven gave to the aisle the reddish-haired D.

S. He carried coat, collar, hairbrushes and shaving case and went to join the Briton in the men's washroom.

There was now no one else in the main part of the car; and no berths other than those already accounted for had been made up. Yet Eaton still delayed; his first impulse to get up and dress had been lost in the intensity of the thought in which he was engaged. He had let himself sink back against the pillows, while he stared, unseeingly, at the solid bank of snow beside the car, when the door at the further end of the coach opened and Conductor Connery entered, calling a name.

"Mr. Hillward! Mr. Lawrence Hillward! Telegram for Mr. Hillward!"

Eaton started at the first call of the name; he sat up and faced about.

"Mr. Hillward! Telegram for Mr. Lawrence Hillward!"

The conductor was opposite Section Three; Eaton now waited tensely and delayed until the conductor was past; then putting his head out of his curtains and a.s.suring himself that the car was otherwise empty as when he had seen it last, he hailed as the conductor was going through the door.

"What name? Who is that telegram for?"

"Mr. Lawrence Hillward."