know that they were the boy’s last message to the woman he loved. She paused halfway down the stairs and looked at me, and then over my head into the drawing room, and then her eyes questioned mine. I bungled at my explanation and she thanked me for coming, but she couldn’t hide her disappointment, and scarcely glanced at herself in the mirror as I put her wrap about her shoulders.
“It was not a cheerful ride down to the Capitol. Miss Masterson did her duty by me bravely, but I found it difficult to be even decently attentive to what she was saying. Once arrived at Representative Hall, where the dance was held, the strain was relieved, for the fellows all pounced down on her for dances, and there were friends of hers there from Helena and Laramie, and my responsibility was practically at an end. Don’t expect me to tell you what a Wyoming inaugural ball is like. I’m not good at that sort of thing, and this dance is merely incidental to my story. Dance followed dance, and still no Larry. The dances I had with Miss Masterson were torture. She began to question and cross-question me, and when I got tangled up in my lies, she became indignant. Freymark was late in arriving. It must have been after midnight when he appeared, correct and smiling, having driven in from his ranch. He was effusively gay and insisted upon shaking hands with me, though I never willingly touched those clammy hands of his. He was constantly dangling about Miss Masterson, who made rather a point of being gracious to him. I couldn’t much blame her under the circumstances, but it irritated me and I’m not ashamed to say that I rather spied on them. When they were on the balcony I heard him say:
“‘You see I’ve forgiven this morning entirely.’
“She answered him rather coolly:
“‘Ah, but you are constitutionally forgiving. However, I’ll be fair and forgive too. It’s more comfortable.’
“Then he said in a slow, insinuating tone, and I could fairly see him thrust out those impudent red lips of his as he said it: ‘If I can teach you to forgive, I wonder whether I could not also teach you to forget? I almost think I could. At any rate I shall make you remember this night.
Rappelles-toi lorsque les destinées
M’auront de toi pour jamais séparé.’
“As they came in, I saw him slip one of Larry’s red roses into his pocket.
“It was not until near the end of the dance that the clock of destiny sounded the first stroke of the tragedy. I remember how gay the scene was, so gay that I had almost forgotten my anxiety in the music, flowers and laughter. The orchestra was playing a waltz, drawing the strains out long and sweet like the notes of a flute, and Freymark was dancing with Helen. I was not dancing myself then, and suddenly I noticed some confusion among the waiters who stood watching by one of the doors, and Larry’s black dog, Duke, all foam at the mouth, shot in the side and bleeding, dashed in through the door and eluding the caterer’s men, ran half the length of the hall and threw himself at Freymark’s feet, uttering a howl piteous enough to herald any sort of calamity. Freymark, who had not seen him before, turned with an exclamation of rage and a face absolutely livid and kicked the wounded brute halfway across the slippery floor. There was something fiendishly brutal and horrible in the episode, it was the breaking out of the barbarian blood through his mask of European civilization, a jet of black mud that spurted up from some nameless pest hole of filthy heathen cities. The music stopped, people began moving about in a confused mass, and I saw Helen’s eyes seeking mine appealingly. I hurried to her, and by the time I reached her Freymark had disappeared.
“‘Get the carriage and take care of Duke,’ she said, and her voice trembled like that of one shivering with cold.
“When we were in the carriage she spread one of the robes on her knee, and I lifted the dog up to her, and she took him in her arms, comforting him.
“‘Where is Larry, and what does all this mean?’ she asked. ‘You can’t put me off any longer, for I danced with a man who came up on the extra.’
“Then I made a clean breast of it, and told her what I knew, which was little enough.
“‘Do you think he is ill?’ she asked.
“I replied, ‘I don’t know what to think. I’m all at sea.’ For since the appearance of the dog, I was genuinely alarmed.
“She was silent for a long time, but when the rays of the electric street lights flashed at intervals into the carriage, I could see that she was leaning back with her eyes closed and the dog’s nose against her throat. At last she said with a note of entreaty in her voice, ‘Can’t you think of anything?’ I saw that she was thoroughly frightened and told her that it would probably all end in a joke, and that I would telephone her as soon as I heard from Larry, and would more than likely have something amusing to tell her.
“It was snowing hard when we reached the Senator’s, and when we got out of the carriage she gave Duke tenderly over to me and I remember how she dragged on my arm and how played out and exhausted she seemed.
“‘You really must not worry at all,’ I said. ‘You know how Uncertain railroad men are. It’s sure to be better at the next inaugural ball; we’ll all be dancing together then.’
“‘The next inaugural ball,’ she said as we went up the steps, putting out her hand to catch the snow-flakes. ‘That seems a long way off.’
“I got down to the office late next morning, and before I had time to try Grover, the dispatcher at Holyoke called me up to ask whether Larry were still in Cheyenne. He couldn’t raise Grover, he said, and he wanted to give Larry train orders for 151, the eastbound passenger. When he heard what I had to say, he told me I had better go down to Grover on 151 myself, as the storm threatened to tie up all the trains and we might look for trouble.
“I had the veterinary surgeon fix up Duke’s side, and I put him in the express car, and boarded 151 with a mighty cold, uncomfortable sensation in the region of my diaphragm.
“It had snowed all night long, and the storm had developed into a blizzard, and the passenger had difficulty in making any headway at all.
“When we got into Grover I thought it was the most desolate spot I had ever looked on, and as the train pulled out, leaving me there, I felt like sending a message of farewell to the world. You know what Grover is, a red box of a station, section house barricaded by coal sheds and a little group of dwellings at the end of everything, with the desert running out on every side to the sky line. The houses and station were covered with a coating of snow that clung to them like wet plaster, and the siding was one deep snow drift, banked against the station door. The plain was a wide, white ocean of swirling, drifting snow, that beat and broke like the thrash of the waves in the merciless wind that swept, with nothing to break it, from the Rockies to the Missouri.
“When I opened the station door, the snow fell in upon the floor, and Duke sat down by the empty, fireless stove and began to howl and whine in a heartbreaking fashion. Larry’s sleeping room upstairs was empty. Downstairs, everything was in order, and all the station work had been done up. Apparently the last thing Larry had done was to bill out a car of wool from the Oasis sheep ranch for Dewey, Gould & Co., Boston. The car had gone out on 153, the eastbound that left Grover at seven o’clock the night before, so he must have been there at that time. I copied the bill in the copy book, and went over to the section house to make inquiries.
“The section boss was getting ready to go out to look after his track. He said he had seen O’Toole at 5:30, when the westbound passenger went through, and, not having seen him since, supposed he was still in Cheyenne. I went over to Larry’s boarding house, and the woman said he must be in Cheyenne, as he had eaten his supper at five o’clock
