ROWLEY still hesitated, even out in the cold twilight, with his suit-case in his hand. He gazed irresolutely into the distant snow-clad dreariness, serrated and smoke-plumed with its scattered little prairie town, and then glanced back at his stalled Pullman.
From the tainted air of the car there crept out to him the fretful wail of an infant. He turned grimly back to the snow-laden prairie, and even as he looked the lamps of the little Northern town flowered into a sudden tenuous brilliance.
Buttoning his overcoat, as though to shut in an unstable determination, he decided on spending the night in the village—Elk Crossing, the porter had called it. In the morning he could once more board the Transcontinental Limited from the squat little depot, when the auxiliary: pushed through from Calgary.
Passengers less vacillating of purpose had already worn a path from the stalled train to the little station-house, so that under Crowley's feet the hard snow crunched as crisply as fresh charcoal. A few lonely stars came out in the high North-Western heavens, pale points of silver on a cloth of violet. The twilight deepened, and seemed to grow volubly silent about him. The momentary sound of a distant hammer echoed and re-echoed through the great stillness; far down the railway track sudden voices called and died away. The keen Canadian cold began to creep into Crowley's very bones. Vaguely, subconsciously, he felt appeasingly thankful that in three weeks he should be facing only the humid coolness of a Japanese midwinter. If it was still wet and chilly at Tokio, though, he would run down to Kiusiu until April. Then a sudden, indeterminate terror of the land of snow and desolation which held him such an unwilling prisoner crept through his mind. He was sick and tired of it all, of its steel-like; relentless air, of its twilight loneliness, of its huddled cities that had become hateful to him. He felt old and worn-out, the child, he told himself, of his wearied, restless, disillusioned East.
He was glad to escape from the gathering night, a minute later, into the thick, tobacco-laden, companionable warmth of Elk Crossing's one and only hotel. Here, however, not even a cot could be secured for the night. The alerter day-coach passengers had already poured into the little wooden road-house and Crowley had to face the disheartening novelty of patroling the village in quest of a bed. The school-teacher, he was told, often took in decent folk, at a pinch. He lived in the Jenkins shack, on the outskirts of the town, and was “smarter 'n blue lightnin'!”
Crowley's spirits were at their lowest ebb when finally he caught sight of a ruddy shaft of light streaming from what he felt must be the Jenkins shack A cheering pennon of smoke rose valiantly from the little chimney. Crowley, more hopeful, quickened his steps. Yet as he knocked loudly on the rough outer door he felt, as he glanced fretfully over his shoulder, that he was looking for a refuge on the very fringes of Emptiness, on the edge of a twilit Nowhere.
Even before Crowley could open the second inner door, battened with rags and woollen cloths, he caught the pungently pleasant smell of frying bacon. He heard a stove-door slam, the sound of quick steps, and the next minute a flood of lamplight was all but blinding his eyes.
“Come in, come in!” a cheery baritone voice was crying. As he stepped inside he heard the two doors quickly slammed shut behind him, and knew that a chair had been pushed hospitably out in front of the stove, one side of which, he noticed, was red-hot. Then the other man laughed, cheerfully, but without apparent reason, and said he guessed it was a sharp night outside.
“It is indeed cold, extremely cold,” answered Crowley inertly, wondering just how to begin. It was a new and humiliating sensation, this begging for a night's lodging.
“I'm crowded out from the hotel here, unfortunately,' he began deficiently. Then he realized what a possible dismissal, on such a night and in such a place, might mean to him, and he dropped back into a conciliatory plaintiveness of tone that sounded strange even to his own ears.
“Can I possibly secure a bed, and a supper, with you to-night?” And, quite contrary to his intention, he found himself warmly shaking hands with his would-be host.
“Why, of course; if you don't mind a shake-down, with a couple of buffalo-robes!” the genial young baritone voice cried back at him.
“I shall, of course, pay you for your trouble.” By this time Crowley's eyes had grown accustomed to the light, and he looked at the other man with a natural curiosity which deepened, as he gazed, to a discreet studiousness.