The Daughter of a Magnate | Page 4

wind died and for
a moment the lightning ceased, but the calm, like the storm, was

terrifying. As they stood breathless a report like the ripping of a battery
burst over their heads, a blast shook the heavy car and howled shrilly
away.
Sleep was out of the question. Gertrude looked at her watch. It was four
o'clock. The two dressed and sat together till daylight. When morning
broke, dark and gray, the storm had passed and out of the leaden sky a
drizzle of rain was falling. Beside the car men were moving. The
forward door was open and the conductor in his stormcoat walked in.
"Everything is all right this morning, ladies," he smiled.
"All right? I should think everything all wrong," exclaimed Louise.
"We have been frightened to death."
"They've got the cutting stopped," continued O'Brien, smiling. "Mr.
Glover has left the dike. He just told me the river had fallen six inches
since two o'clock. We'll be out of here now as quick as we can get an
engine : they've been switching with ours. There was considerable wind
in the night--"
"Considerable wind I--"
"You didn't notice it, did you? Glover loaded the bridge with freight
trains about twelve o'clock and I'm thinking it's lucky, for when the
wind went into the northeast about four o'clock I thought it would take
my head off. It snapped like dynamite clear across the valley."
"Oh, we heard!"
"When the wind jumped, a crew was dumping stone into the river. The
men were ordered off the flat cars but there were so many they didn't
all get the word at once, and while the foreman was chasing them down
he was blown clean into the river."
"Drowned?"
"No, he was not. He crawled out away down by the bridge, though a

man couldn't have done it once in a thousand times. It was old Bill
Dancing he's got more lives than a cat. Do you remember where we
first pulled up the train in the afternoon? A string of ten box cars stood
there last night and when the wind shifted it blew the whole bunch off
the track."
"Oh, do let us get away from here," urged Gertrude. "I feel as if
something worse would happen if we stayed. I'm sorry we ever left
McCloud yesterday."
The men came from their compartments and there was more talk of the
storm. Clem and his helpers were starting breakfast in the dining-car
and the doctor and Harrison wanted to walk down to see where the
river had cut into the dike. Mrs. Whitney had not appeared and they
asked the young ladies to go with them. Gertrude objected. A foggy
haze hung over the valley.
"Come along," urged Harrison; "the air will give you an appetite."
After some remonstrating she put on her heavy coat, and carrying
umbrellas the four started under the conductor's guidance across to the
dike. They picked their steps along curving tracks, between material
piles and through the debris of the night. On the dike they spent some
time looking at the gaps and listening to explanations of how the river
worked to undermine and how it had been checked. Watchers hooded
in yellow slickers patrolled the narrow jetties or, motionless, studied
the eddies boiling at their feet.
Returning, the party walked around the edge of the camp where cooks
were busy about steaming kettles. Under long, open tents wearied men
lying on scattered hay slept after the hardship of the night. In the
drizzling haze half a dozen men, assistants to the engineer rough
looking but strong-featured and quick-eyed sat with buckets of
steaming coffee about a huge campfire. Four men bearing a litter came
down the path. Doctor Lanning halted them. A laborer had been
pinched during the night between loads of piling projecting over the
ends of flat cars and they told the doctor his chest was hurt. A soiled
neckcloth covered his face but his stertorous breathing could be heard,

and Gertrude Brock begged the doctor to go to the camp with the
injured man and see whether some thing could not be done to relieve
him until the company surgeon arrived. The doctor, with O'Brien,
turned back. Gertrude, depressed by the incident, followed Louise and
Allen Harrison along the path which wound round a clump of willows
flanking the campfire.
On the sloping bank below the trees and a little out of the wind a man
on a mattress of willows lay stretched asleep. He was clad in leather,
mudstained and wrinkled, and the big brown boots that cased his feet
were strapped tightly above his knees. An arm, outstretched, supported
his head, hidden under a soft gray hat. Like the thick gloves that
covered his clasped hands, his hat and the handkerchief