"Yes, if you will tell the other members of your party why I am there."
The President smiled again, sardonically this time.
"I think the occasion for that has gone by," he said. "Good-night."
When the outer door closed behind his visitor, Brockway collapsed as was his undoubted privilege. Then he revived under the stimulus of an overwaxing and masterful desire to see Gertrude again before he slept--to share the good news with her before the burden of it should crush him. And he was considering how it might be brought about when the engineer blew the whistle for Bending Bow.
Bending Bow is but an insignificant side-track on the mountain-buttressed plain some thirty miles from Denver; and I would for the sake of the two young persons whose romance this is, that it might have been a meeting-point with a delayed train.
When the first of the switch-lights flashed past the windows of the Tadmor, Brockway went out and stood on the step ready to drop off when the speed should slacken sufficiently to permit it. While hanging from the hand-rail he glanced ahead and saw that which made his heart glad. The signal-lamp at the station turned a crimson eye toward the train, and that meant orders, and a few more seconds of precious time.
At the first shrill sigh of the air-brakes, he sprang off and ran beside the private car, trying to peer into the darkened windows, and taking all sorts of risks considering the hazard he ran of lighting upon the wrong one.
But good fortune was with him. Before the smoking wheels had quite ceased grinding fire out of the brake-shoes, he came to a window with a tiny corner of a handkerchief fluttering beneath it. It was Gertrude's signal, and he understood then that he had been keeping tryst on the wrong side of the car as it stood on the spur-track in Denver. The window was closed and curtained like the others, but it went up noiselessly when he tapped on the glass.
Now it was pitchy dark, both within and without, but love has sharpened senses and eyes which no night has ever yet been black enough to befool. "Frederick!" said a soft voice from within, and there was joyful surprise in the single word. Then a hand came out to him, and he possessed himself of it as one who will keep that which is his.