The Daughter of a Magnate | Page 5

knotted about
his neck were soaked by the rain, falling quietly and trickling down the
furrows of his leather coat. But his attitude was one of exhaustion, and
trifles of discomfort were lost in his deep respiration.
"Oh!" exclaimed Gertrude Brock under her breath, "look at that poor
fellow asleep in the rain. Allen?"
Allen Harrison, ahead, was struggling to hold his umbrella upright
while he rolled a cigarette. He turned as he passed the paper across his
lips. "Throw your coat over him, Allen."
Harrison pasted the paper roll, and putting it to his mouth felt for his
match-case. "Throw my coat over him!"
"Yes."
Allen took out a match. "Well, I like that. That's like you, Gertrude.
Suppose you throw your coat over him."
Gertrude looked silently at her companion. There is a moment when
women should be humored; not all men are fortunate enough to
recognize it. Louise, still walking ahead, called, "Come on," but
Gertrude did not move.
"Allen, throw your coat over the poor fellow," she urged. "You

wouldn't let your dog lie like that in the rain."
"But, Gertrude do me the kindness--" he passed his umbrella to her that
he might better manage the lighting "he's not my dog."
If she made answer it was only in the expression of her eyes. She
handed the umbrella back, flung open her long coat and slipped it from
her shoulders. With the heavy garment in her hands she stepped from
her path toward the sleeper and noticed for the first time an utterly
disreputable-looking dog lying beside him in the weeds. The dog's long
hair was bedraggled to the color of the mud he curled in, and as he
opened his eyes with out raising his head, Gertrude hesitated; but his
tail spoke a kindly greeting. He knew no harm was meant and he
watched unconcernedly while, determined not to recede from her
impulse, Gertrude stepped hastily to the sleeper's side and dropped her
coat over his shoulders.
Louise was too far ahead to notice the incident. After breakfast she
asked Gertrude what the matter was.
"Nothing. Allen and I had our first quarrel this morning."
As she spoke, the train, high in the air, was creeping over the Spider
bridge.
CHAPTER II
AN ERROR AT HEADQUARTERS
WHEN the Brock-Harrison party, familiarly known among those with
whom they were by no means familiar as the Steel Crowd, bought the
transcontinental lines that J. S. Bucks, the second vice-president and
general manager, had built up into a system, their first visit to the West
End was awaited with some uneasiness. An impression prevailed that
the new owners might take decided liberties with what Conductor
O'Brien termed the "personal" of the operating department.
But week after week followed the widely heralded announcement of

the purchase without the looked-for visit from the new owners. During
the interval West End men from the general superintendent down were
admittedly on edge with the exception of Conductor O'Brien. "If I go, I
go," was all he said, and in making the statement in his even,
significant way it was generally understood that the trainman that ran
the paycars and the swell mountain specials had in view a
superintendency on the New York Central. On what he rested his
confidence in the opening no one certainly knew, though Pat Francis
claimed it was based wholly on a cigar in a glass case once given to the
genial conductor by Chauncey M. Depew when travelling special to the
coast under his charge.
Be that as it may, when the West End was at last electrified by the
announcement that the Brock- Harrison syndicate train had already
crossed the Missouri and might be expected any day, O'Brien with his
usual luck was detailed as one of the conductors to take charge of the
visitors.
The pang in the operating department was that the long-delayed
inspection tour should have come just at a time when the water had
softened things until every train on the mountain division was run
under slow-orders.
At McCloud Vice-president Bucks, a very old campaigner, had held the
party for two days to avoid the adverse conditions in the west and
turned the financiers of the party south to inspect branches while the
road was drying in the hills. But the party of visitors contained two
distinct elements, the money-makers and the money-spenders--the
generation that made the investment and the generation that distributed
the dividends. The young people rebelled at branch line trips and
insisted on heading for sightseeing and hunting straight into the
mountains. Accordingly, at McCloud the party split, and while Henry S.
Brock and his business associates looked over the branches, his private
cars containing his family and certain of their friends were headed for
the headquarters of the mountain