Two on the Trail.

by Hulbert Footner.

I

IN PAPPS'S RESTAURANT

The interior of Papps's, like most Western restaurants, was divided into a double row of little cabins with a pa.s.sage between, each cabin having a swing door. Garth Pevensey found the place very full; and he was ushered into a cubby-hole which already contained two diners, a man and a woman nearing the end of their meal. They appeared to be incoming settlers of the better cla.s.s--a farmer and his wife from across the line. Far from resenting Garth's intrusion, they visibly welcomed it; after all, there was something uncomfortably suggestive of a cell in those narrow cabins to which the light of day never penetrated.

Garth pa.s.sed behind the farmer's chair, and seated himself next the wall. He had no sooner ordered his luncheon than the door was again opened, and the rotund Mr. Papps, with profuse apologies, introduced a fourth to their table. The vacant place, it appeared, was the very last remaining in his establishment.

The newcomer was a girl; young, slender and decidedly pretty: such was Garth's first impression. She came in without hesitation, and took the place opposite Garth with that serenely oblivious air so characteristic of the highly civilized young lady. Very trimly and quietly dressed, sufficiently well-bred to accept the situation as a matter of course.

Thus Garth's further impressions. "What a girl to be meeting up in this corner of the world, and how I should like to know her!" he added in his mind. The maiden's bland aloofness was discouraging to this hope; nevertheless, his heart worked in an extra beat or two, as he considered the added relish his luncheon would have, garnished by occasional glances at such a delightful _vis-a-vis_. Meanwhile, he was careful to take his cue from her; his face, likewise, expressed a blank.

The farmer and his wife became very uncomfortable. Simple souls, they could not understand how a personable youth and a charming girl should sit opposite each other with such wooden faces. Their feeling was that at quarters so close extra sociability was demanded, and the utter lack of it caused them to move uneasily in their chairs, and gently perspire.

They unconsciously hastened to finish, and having at length dutifully polished their plates, arose and left the cabin with audible sighs of relief.

This was a contingency Garth had not foreseen, and his heart jumped. At the same time he felt a little sorry for the girl. He wondered if she would consider it an act of delicacy if he fastened the door open with a chair. On second thoughts, he decided such a move would be open to misconstruction. Had he only known it, she was dying to laugh and, at the slightest twinkle in his eyes, would have gone off into a peal. Only Garth's severe gravity restrained her--and that in turn made her want to laugh harder than ever. But how was Garth to learn all that? Girls, more especially girls like this, were to him insolvable mysteries--like the heavenly constellations. Of course, there are those who pretend to have discovered their orbits, and have written books on the subject; but for him, he preferred simply to wonder and to admire.

Since her arrival the objective point of his desire shifted from his plate some three feet across the table; he now gazed covertly at her with more hunger than he evinced for his food. She had a good deal the aspect of a plucky boy, he thought; a direct, level gaze; a quick, sure turn to her head; and the fresh, bright lips of a boy. But that was no more than a pleasant fancy; in reality she was woman clear through. Eve lurked in the depths of her blue eyes, for all they hung out the colours of simple honesty; and Eve winked at him out of every fold of her rich chestnut hair. She was quick and impulsive in her motions; and although she showed such a blank front to the man opposite, her lips flickered with the desire to smile; and tiny frowns came and went between the twin crescents of her brows.

As for her, she was sizing him up too, though with skilfully veiled glances. She saw a square-shouldered young man, who sat calmly eating his lunch, without betraying too much self-consciousness on the one hand, or any desire to make flirtatious advances on the other. Yet he was not stupid, either; he had eyes that saw what they were turned on, she noted. His admirable, detached att.i.tude piqued her, though she would have been quick to resent any other. She was angry with him for forcing this repression on her; repression was not natural to this young lady.

She longed to clear the air with a burst of laughter, but the thought of a quick, cool glance of surprise from the steady eyes opposite effectually checked her. As for his features, they were well enough, she thought. He had a shapely head, broadest over the ears, and thatched with thick, straight hair of the ashy-brown just the other side of blonde. His eyes were of the shade politely called gray, though yellow or green might be said with equal truth, had not those colours unpleasant a.s.sociations. His nose was longish, and he had a comical trick of seeming to look down it, at which she greatly desired to laugh.

His mouth was well cut, and decisively finished at the corners; and he had a chin to match. In spite of her irritation with him, she was reminded of a picture she had seen of Henry Fifth looking out from his helmet on the field of Agincourt.

As the minutes pa.s.sed, and Garth maintained his calm, she became quite unreasonably wroth. Her own luncheon was now before her. By and by she wanted salt, and the only cellar stood at Garth's elbow. Nothing could have induced her to ask for it; she merely stared fixedly. Garth, presently observing, politely offered the salt-cellar. She waited until he had put it down on the table, and removed his hand from the neighbourhood; then took it.

"Thank you," she murmured indignantly; furious at having to say it.

Garth wondered what he had done to offend her.

At this moment there was an interruption; again the apologetic Mr.

Papps with yet another guest. This was a tradesman's comely young wife, with very ruffled plumage, and the distracted air of the unaccustomed traveller. She was carrying in her arms a shiny black valise, three a.s.sorted paper-covered bundles with the string coming off, and a hat in a paper bag; and, although it was so warm, she wore her winter's coat, plainly because there was no other way to bring it. Her hair was flying from its moorings; her face flamed; and her hat sat at a disreputably rakish angle. As she piled up her enc.u.mbrances on the chair next to the girl, and took off her coat, she bubbled over with indistinguishable, anxious mutterings. At last she sank into the seat by Garth with something between a sigh and a moan.

"I've lost my husband," she announced at large.

Her distress was so comical they could not forbear smiling.

Encouraged by this earnest of sympathy, the newcomer plunged into a breathless recital of her mischances.

"Just came in over the A. N. R.," she panted. "By rights we should have arrived last night, but day-before-yesterday's train had the right of way and we was held up down to Battle Run. I tell you, the rails of that line are like the waves of the sea! I was that sea-sick I thought never to eat mortal food again--but it's coming back; my appet.i.te I mean. He was to meet me, but I suppose he got tired after seventeen hours, small blame--and dropped off somewheres. S'pose I'll have to make a round of the hotels till I find him. You don't happen to know him, do you?" she asked Garth. "John Pink, the carpenter?"

"I'm a stranger in Prince George," said he politely.

"Oh, what and all I've been through!" groaned Mrs. Pink, with an access of energetic distress. She shook a warning finger at the girl. "Take my advice, Miss," she warned, "and don't you let him out of your sight a minute, till you get him safe home!"

The girl looked hard at her plate; while for Garth, a slow, dark red crept up from his neck to the roots of his hair. Yet Mrs. Pink's mistake was surely a natural one; there they sat lunching privately together in the secluded little cabin. Moreover, they looked like fit mates, each for the other; and their air of studied indifference was no more than the air commonly a.s.sumed by young married couples in public places--especially the lately married. Without appearing to raise her eyes, the girl in some mysterious way, was conscious of Garth's dark flush. "Serve him right,"

she thought with wicked satisfaction. "I shan't help him out." But Garth's blush was for her more than for himself.

Mrs. Pink, absorbed in her own troubles, was innocently unaware of the consternation she had thrown them into. She plunged ahead; still addressing her remarks to the girl.

"Perhaps you think there's no danger of losing yours so soon," she went on; "and very like you're right. But, my dear, you never can tell! Bless you, when I was on my wedding journey, he hung around continuous. I couldn't get shet of the man for a minute, and I was fair tired out of seeing him. But that wears off--not that I mean it would with you"--turning to Garth--"but nothing different couldn't hardly be expected in the course of nature."

Garth considered whether he should stop Mrs. Pink's tongue by telling the truth. But it seemed ungallant to be in such haste to deny the responsibility. He felt rather that the disclaimer should come from the girl; and she made no move; indeed, he almost fancied he saw the ghost of a smile. Under his irritation with the woman and her clumsy tongue, he was conscious of a secret glow of pleasure. There was something highly flattering in being taken for the husband of such an ultra-desirable creature. The thought of her being really one with his future, as the woman supposed, and travelling about the country with him made his heart beat fast. Slender, trim and mistress of herself, she had exactly the look of the wife he had pictured.

Mrs. Pink broke off long enough to order her luncheon, and from the extent of the order it appeared she had entirely recovered her appet.i.te.

"The next thing I have to do after finding my man," she resumed, with a wild pa.s.s at her hat, which lurched it as far over on the other side, "is to find a house. They tell me rents are terrible high in Prince George. Are you two going to settle here?"

Garth replied in the negative. He had decided if the girl did not choose to enlighten Mrs. Pink, he would not.

"It has a great future ahead of it," she said solemnly. "It's a grand place for a young couple to start life in. And elegant air for children.

Mine are at my mother's."

Garth swallowed a gasp at this; but the girl never blinked an eye.

"But how I do run on!" exclaimed Mrs. Pink. "No doubt you've got a good start somewheres else."

"Not so very," said Garth with a smile.

The smile disarmed the young lady sitting opposite, and somehow obliged her to reconsider her opinion of him. "I believe the creature has a sense of humour," was her thought.

"Are you Canadians?" inquired Mrs. Pink politely.

"I am from New York," said Garth.

Mrs. Pink opened her eyes to their widest. If he had said Cochin China she could not have appeared more surprised. For New York has a magical name in the Provinces; and the more remote, the more glowing the halo evoked by the sound.

"Bless me!" she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. Then, addressing herself to the girl: "How fine the shops and the opera houses must be there!"

"I've not been there in some years," she answered coolly. "I am from Ontario."

"Well, I declare!" cried Mrs. Pink. "Quite a romance! Where did you meet?"

"Here," said Garth readily. There was no turning back now.

"What a nice man!" now thought this perverse young lady.

"Well! Well!" exclaimed Mrs. Pink with immense interest. "Ain't that odd now! Was it long since?"

"Not so very," said Garth vaguely. He glanced across the table and saw that his supposed wife had finished her lunch. His heart sank heavily.

"Three months?" hazarded Mrs. Pink.

"It was about half an hour ago," came brisk and clear from across the table.

Mrs. Pink looked up in utter amazement; her jaw dropped; and a piece of bread was arrested halfway to her mouth. The girl had risen and was drawing on her gloves.