When the train conductor came in ten minutes later Glover talked with him. While the men spoke Gertrude noticed how Glover overran the dainty chair she had provided. She scrutinized his rough-weather garb, the heavy hunting boots, the stout reefer buttoned high, and the leather cap crushed now with his gloves in his hand. She had been asking him where he got the cap, and a moment before, while her attention wandered, he had told her the story of a company of Russian noblemen and engineers from Vladivostok, who, during the summer, had been his guests, nominally on a bear hunt, though they knew better than to hunt bears in summer. It was really to pick up points on American railroad construction. He might go, he thought, the following spring to Siberia himself, perhaps to stay--this man that feared the wind--he had had a good offer. The cap was a present. The two men went out and she was left alone. A flagman, hat in hand, passed through the car. The shock of the engine coupler striking the buffer hardly disturbed her reverie; for her the night meant too much. Glover was with the operators giving final instructions to Giddings for ploughs to meet them without fail at Point of Rocks. Hastening from the office he looked again at the barometer. It promised badly and the thermometer stood at ten degrees above zero. He had made his way through the falling snow to where they were coupling the engine to the car, watched narrowly, and going forward spoke to the engineer. When he re-entered the car it was moving slowly out of the yard. Gertrude, with a smile, put aside her book. "I am so glad," she said, looking at her watch. "I hope we shall get there by eleven o'clock; we should, should we not, Mr. Glover?" "It's a poor night for making a schedule," was all he said. The arcs of the long yard threw white and swiftly passing beams of light through the windows, and the warmth within belied the menace outside. At the rear end of the car the flagman worked with one of the tail-lights that burned badly, and the conductor watched him. Gertrude laid aside her furs and threw open her jacket. Her hat she kept on, and sitting in a deep chair told Glover of her father's arrival from the East on Wednesday and explained how she had set her heart on surprising him that evening at Medicine Bend. "Where are we now?" she asked, as the rumble of the whirling trucks deepened. "Entering Sleepy Cat Canyon, the Rat River----" "Oh, I remember this. I ride on the platform almost every time I come through here so I may see where you split the mountain. And every time I see it I ask myself the same question. How came he ever to think of that?"