The Texan | Page 9

And I'm glad because really, Winthrop, you're a dear. There are lots of things about you I admire. Your teeth, and eyes, and the way you wear your clothes. If you weren't so terribly conventional, so cut and dried, and matter of fact, and safe, I might fall really and truly in love with you. But--Oh, I don't know! Here I am, twenty-three. And I suppose I'm a little fool and have never grown up. I like to read stories about knights errant, and burglars, and fair ladies, and pirates, and mysterious dark oriental-looking men. And I like to go to places where everybody don't go--only Dad won't let me and---- Why just think!" she exclaimed in sudden wrath, "I've been in California for three months and I've ridden over the same trails everybody else has ridden over, and motored over the same roads and climbed the same mountains, and bathed at the same beach, and I've met everybody I ever knew in New York, just as I would have met them in Newport or Palm Beach or in Paris or Venice or Naples for that matter!"
"But why go off the beaten track where everything is arranged for your convenience? These people are experienced travellers. They know that by keeping to the conventional routes-----"
"Winthrop Adams Endicott, if you say that word again I'll shriek! Or I'll go in from this platform and not speak to you again--ever! You know very well that there isn't a traveller among them. They're just tourists--professional goers. They do the same things, and say the same things, and if they could think, they'd think the same things every place they go. And I don't want things arranged for my convenience--so there!"
Winthrop Adams Endicott lighted a cigarette, brushed some white dust from his sleeve, and smiled.
"If I were a man and loved a girl so very, very much I wouldn't just sit around and grin. I'd do something!"
"But, my dear Alice, what would you have me do? I'm not a knight errant, nor a burglar, nor a pirate, nor a dark mysterious oriental--I'm just a plain ordinary business man and----"
"Well, I'd do something--even if it was something awful like getting drunk or shooting somebody. Why, if you even had a past you wouldn't be so hopeless. I could love a man with a past. It would show at least, that he hadn't followed the line of the least resistance. The world is full of canals--but there are only a few canyons. Look! I believe we're stopping! Oh, I hope it's a hold-up! What will you do if it is?" The train slowed to a standstill and Winthrop Adams Endicott leaned out and gazed along the line of the coaches.
"There is a little town here. Seems to be some commotion up ahead--quite a crowd. If I can get this blamed gate open we can go up and see what the trouble is."
"And if you can't get it open you can climb over and lift me down. I'm just dying to know what's the matter. And if you dare to say it wouldn't be conventional I'll--I'll jump!"
CHAPTER II
WOLF RIVER
A uniformed flagman, with his flag and a handful of torpedoes swung from the platform and started up the track.
"What's the trouble up in front?" asked the girl as Endicott assisted her to the ground.
"Cloud busted back in the mountains, an' washed out the trussle, an' Second Seventy-six piled up in the river."
"Oh, a wreck?" she exclaimed. "Will we have time to go up and see it?"
"I'd say it's a wreck," grinned the trainman. "An' you've got all the time you want. We're a-goin' to pull in on the sidin' an' let the wrecker an' bridge crew at it. But even with 'em a-workin' from both ends it'll be tomorrow sometime 'fore they c'n get them box cars drug out an' a temp'ry trussle throw'd acrost."
"What town is this?"
"Town! Call it a town if you want to. It's Wolf River. It's a shippin' point fer cattle, but it hain't no more a town 'n what the crick's a river. The trussle that washed out crosses the crick just above where it empties into Milk River. I've railroaded through here goin' on three years an' I never seen no water in it to speak of before, an' mostly it's plumb dry."
The man sauntered slowly up the track as one who performs a merely nominal duty, and the girl turned to follow Endicott. "It would have been easier to walk through the train," he ventured, as he picked his way over the rough track ballast.
"Still seeking the line of least resistance," mocked the girl. "We can walk through a train any time. But we can't breathe air like this, and, see,--through that gap--the blue of the distant mountains!"
The man removed his hat