There always was hot mince pie for Sunday dinner on the train. The filling for it came out of buckets similar to the jelly containers, bearing labels picturing the fruits, condiments, meats and liquors which were the traditional components of that barbaric dish. The pictures were only symbolical, designed to provoke the appetite and spice the anticipation, the mixture within the pails containing little of the fruits and delicacies shown there in vivid green and red. It would have been an unwise and profitless exploration for anyone who had eaten or intended to eat the mixture, to inquire too closely into the ingredients of that brown, spiced hash.
What it contained or did not contain caused neither speculation nor disquiet in the minds or stomachs of the jerries. It had a racy nip to it, which might have been vinegar, cider or champagne for all a jerry cared, with plenty of sharp spices to delight their smoke-toughened palates. Each jerry had his wedge of it, cut to a true and impartial form. It was the very first thing laid down on the long table by Mary and Annie when they set the stage for the midday meal.
There was one slight deviation from the weekday program in the Sunday dinner: the girls did not remain in the dining-car after the jerries were seated. Instead of standing by with the coffeepots as on other days, the girls stood them on the floor, one at each end of the table. If any jerry wanted a second cup he must go after it, at the risk of somebody hogging his pie while he was gone. That was the Sunday concession to Annie and Mary, the one little break in the rule of service in the lives of the ladies who lived on wheels.
Mrs. Charles summoned the jerries to their meals by beating a resounding signal on a dishpan from the kitchen door. When she was ready for Dr. Hall, usually about half an hour later, she whooped shrilly, or sent Mary running across, or Annie put her head out of the door, fingers between her teeth, and whistled.
On hearing this latter signal this Sunday noon, Dr. Hall got to his feet with alacrity, newspapers flung around his chair, his speculations and conjectures over the doings of last night brought to an abrupt end. The signal to meals was always welome. It was amazing how hungry a man got in that country west of Dodge.
Annie and Mary were fresh as wild roses in their long white aprons and crimped bangs, for not much is needed to make a young woman attractive when she has a hearty good humor and a clean face. Last night's party, even with its interrupted program, had been a refreshing interlude to them. They were gayer for it; Annie had many a laugh to stop in the door of her big mouth with hastily clapped hand.
They had spoken at breakfast of the trouble at the dance, discussed it briefly, and finished with it. Encounters between men were not a strange sight in their eyes; perils and small heroisms were things common to railroad life. To the women of the boarding-train and the jerries, there was nothing to marvel over in Dr. Hall's close brush the night before. He had done well in putting a stop to the disturbance, better still by patching up the poor savage of the prairies and sending him on his way. That was done like a railroader. There was nothing more to be said.
Mrs. Charles was indignant, rather than amused, over the effort of Jim Justice to unload his unprofitable hotel upon her hands. It required no records nor balance sheets to enlighten her on the state of business in that establishment. Compared to her own busy boarding-house on wheels, it was only a stagnant eddy beside the stream of the passing world.
"The time's comin' when a hotel in Damascus will pay, and pay big, but it's never goin' to do it under the management of any old crawfish like Jim Justice," she said. "I can see the time comin' when I'd like to have a nice white hotel of about twenty rooms in this town, but I can't see that time near enough to buy that man out for four thousand dollars."
"The old rascal!" Hall blurted indignantly. "He told me not a week ago he'd be glad to sell for three thousand."
"Yes, and he'd take two if anybody offered it to him. But I'm not ready right now to start up a hotel on land."
"I wish you was," Annie said wistfully.
"Yes, but in some town, not this flag station away out here in this cussid country!" Mary added, bitter in her scorn of Damascus and its insignificance in the railroad scheme.
"Dodge is overdone on hotels," Mrs. Charles returned, corrective and sarcastic in a breath.
"There's other places besides Dodge," said Mary hotly, redder for Annie's suppressed giggle, part of which would get out between her fingers. "Oh, shut up, or I'll slap you to sleep!" turning fiercely on her sister, who was undisturbed by her threat.
"They say it's all settled to make this a division point and build shops," Hall remarked, as indifferent to Mary's threat against her sister as the others, such outbursts between them being of daily occurrence. "That is, if they keep the county seat here. Otherwise it's going to Simrall, they say. But Simrall hasn't got much of a chance to win the election, according to the poll of voters, Judge Waters was telling me yesterday."
"They always say that about every railroad camp," Mary told him with high scorn. "Some people's ready to believe anything. I pity their ignorance!"
Hall was too well accustomed to the honest method of railroad expression by this time to be embarrassed by Mary's sniffing comment on his weakness. He helped himself to mashed potatoes without flush or tremor, only giving Annie a wink of understanding, as much as to say that, between them, it was appreciated as a joke. Mrs. Charles was cutting a slice of beef. She did not take her eyes from the operation to correct her outspoken daughter by as much as a frown.
"It's funny," Mrs. Charles commented, "how it gets out on a person if they've got a little money. I've got five thousand dollars—I guess everybody might as well know it now—in a savin's bank in Denver, but how Jim Justice ever got wind of it I don't know. Charley Burnett's found it out, too. Well, I don't mind about Charley; he's a—what do you think about that cattle company of his he's organized, Dr. Hall?"
"Does he want you to put your money in it?" Dr. Hall counter-queried.
"Yes," Mrs. Charles admitted, nodding several times, impressed by what she appeared to believe the doctor's shrewdness in the case. "Charley was down here bright and early this morning wantin' me to take some stock in his company. Everybody in town's gone in with him, he says. But I don't know. I wanted to ask you."
"I'm afraid Burnett is promising more than he can deliver," Hall replied, shaking his head gravely.
"He's made a lot of money speculatin' in cattle the last year or two, though," Mrs. Charles said.
"You can't go very strong on public report. Does he show any figures on his present condition?"
"A lot of cattlemen around here have gone in with him," she replied. "I guess they wouldn't risk their money in something that wasn't sound. Charley says cattle are bound to go away up on account of 'em cuttin' the range up in Texas for farmin'. He says he'll guarantee two dollars for every one a person puts in his company by next December."
While Mrs. Charles seemed merely to be repeating Burnett's assurances to her, she was in fact arguing for his scheme, in the way that a proselyte to some belief which he has not investigated and does not understand, argues with specious shallowness, more to confirm himself in his new convictions than in the expectation of convincing another. Hall was reluctant to advise her bluntly against putting a dollar into Burnett's company. He could not denounce the business, knowing nothing about Burnett's resources, although he questioned his intention and business probity.
"Don't you think Charley's honest?" Mrs. Charles asked him pointedly.
"Honest men lose their heads in business schemes sometimes, and get in deeper than they can wade," he replied. "He might be able to turn two dollars for one on his investment by next fall, but it sounds a little wild to me"
"What do you know about it? How many cattle did you ever raise?" Mary challenged in quick-fire questioning, taking no trouble to conceal her low opinion of him as a financial adviser.
"I've raised more beef right here at this table than I ever did before in my life," Hall replied, with no great success at railroad humor.
"Some people couldn't even raise hell with a spoon!" said Mary, her repartee more to the point, it appeared. It got a laugh out of Annie, which it took one hand clapped on the other to hold in, along with the first bite of mince pie which she had enveloped only a moment before.
"Would you put any money in the company yourself, Dr. Hall?" Mrs. Charles asked.
"Since you come at me that way, no. No; I wouldn't put a dollar into any scheme Burnett stood back of, if I had a barrel of it."
"I told Charley I'd have to think it over and ask some advice about it. If you don't think—"
"I wish to God somebody'd come along that's got brains enough to advise you, then!" Mary interposed. "What's it to some people if we never get out of this greasy, crummy old train! It's all right to somebody that don't have to slave and slop around here day in and year in for board and clothes. Clothes! Huh! I ain't got clothes enough to flag a handcar, and me waitin' table for a gang of tarriers as long as I can remember."
"You might be worse off," Mrs. Charles chided her, but kindly, feeling perhaps that her bitterness was not altogether unjustified.
"You might be on the bum, kid," said Annie, soberly. "It ain't so worse feedin' jerries. I'd rather do it than slave in somebody's kitchen in the city."
"Wise girl, Annie!" Dr. Hall commended her, patting her shoulder with patriarchal caress.
"I know what I'd say to Charley Burnett if he wanted me to put money in his cattle company," Annie continued. "I'd tell him to go straight up."
"I ain't put any money in it yet, Annie," Mrs. Charles reminded her.
"Don't, then," said the genial Annie, shortly.
"Old rags and old shucks, over in the corner!" Mary derided her. "Workin' your arms off on this darned old train, marryin' some snoot of a jerry and livin' in a shack by the side of the track. I'd rather marry one of these grays on a farm."
"Everything looks better than the business you're in," Mrs. Charles sighed, knowing from long experience the uselessness of argument against Mary when she had a spell on like that. Mary was the discord of the kitchen, the rebel of the train. Everybody else was either satisfied with things as they were, or accepted them cheerfully in the hope of doing better in time. Only Mary chafed her heart sore; only Mary, of the three, was ashamed of her lot. To-day she was sharper than usual, careless of who heard her or of whom she hurt.
Dr. Hall was called from the table before he had finished his pie, on the frantic summons of Little Jack Ryan, whose prodigious wife had broken her neck, he said, in a fall down the kitchen steps.
The fact proved to be less serious than the report, the break being no nearer the lady's neck than her collar bone. She was making a great moan and commotion over the misfortune, apparently having inherited none of the Indian fortitude. Jack wanted the doctor to give her "a drap o' clariform," which being denied, he suggested whisky as a succedaneum. While the doctor did not prohibit it, knowing the interdiction would hold no longer than he was out of the door, he said she would be better off without it. Jack said if the doctor had no objection he would take a little snort himself, then, to assist him in bearing the sight of his poor dear's suffering.
Jack's next greatest concern was whether the accident could be listed as a railroad casualty, and himself relieved of doctor's charges through that arrangement. Dr. Hall was afraid it could not be done, but Jack could rest easy about the bill. There would not be any.
"It's a relafe," said Jack, "it's noble and grand of you, dochter, dear. I've been invistin' me capital. I've gone in the cattle business along of Charley Burnett."
"The devil you have!" Hall said, nothing complimentary for either investor or promoter in his surprised exclamation.
"It's a fine business he has, Charley Burnett, and a smart felly he is, too, with his pocket full of diamints. He'll turn every dollar I've put in with him into two before Christmas, as aisy as I'd clane a lamp. It's nothing to him to make money; he was born with the gift."
"He was born with some kind of a gift," Hall agreed. "How much did he get—how much did you put in the pot?"
"Twelve hoondred," said Jack, easily, with an air of largeness, as if the sum amounted to so little in his expansive affairs. "It'll come back to me twinty-foive."
Hall considered it wiser to withhold comment. The affair was no business of his; expression of his doubts on this quickly promised turn of money would only set Ryan's anxiety working several months ahead of time. . It would do for the simple fellow to sweat over his investment when dividend time arrived. Then it might turn out better than he expected. He had no warrant, based alone on his personal dislike of Burnett, to go around knocking his easy money scheme.
Hall finished bandaging Mrs. Ryan's shoulder, saying no more, regretful, indeed, of what he had said already in the way of advice that day. But he hoped fervently that Mrs. Charles would let her money rest in the savings bank, hard-won as it was, slow as it must have been in growing to that comfortable sum. It was a golden bait in Burnett's eye, and he would not let it swing out of his grab if glib words and side-plugging with the ambitious Mary could accomplish his purpose. The fellow was altogether too eager, it appeared to Hall, to pull his neighbors into his sure thing, for a strictly honest business man.