there; I’ll make good, don’t worry.” He paused and sized his man up. “Come over here, Simmons,” he said with a significant wink, leading the way toward the door. “I want that job; I want it badly.” Toppy dived into his pockets. Two bills came to light—two twenties. He slipped them casually into Simmons’ hand. “That’s how bad I want it. Now how about it?”
The fashion in which Simmons’ thin fingers closed upon the money told Toppy that he was not mistaken in the agent’s character.
“You’ll be taking your own chances,” warned Simmons, carefully pocketing the money. “If you don’t make good—well, you’ll have to explain to Reivers, that’s all. You must have an awful good reason for wanting to go out.”
“I have.”
“Hiding from something, mebbe?” suggested Simmons.
“Maybe,” said Toppy. “And, say—there’s a young lady over at the hotel who’s looking for you. Said you were to furnish her with a sleigh to get out to Cameron Dam.”
An evil smile broke over the agent’s thin face as he moved toward the door.
“The new bookkeeper, I suppose,” he said, winking at Toppy. “Aha! Now I understand why you——”
Toppy caught him two steps from the door. His fingers sank into the man’s withered biceps.
“No, you don’t understand,” he hissed grimly. “Get that? You don’t understand anything about it.”
“All right,” snapped the cowed man. “Leggo my arm. I was just joshing. You can take a joke, can’t you? Well, then, come along. As long as you’re going out you might as well go at once. I’ve got to get a double team, anyhow, for the lady, and you’ve got to start now to make it before dark. Ready to start now?”
“All ready,” said Toppy.
At the door the agent paused.
“Say, you haven’t said anything about wages yet,” he said quizzically.
“That’s so,” said Toppy, as if he had forgotten. “How much am I going to get?”
“Sixty a month.”
The agent couldn’t understand why the new man should laugh. It struck Toppy as funny that a little girl with a baby dimple in her chin should be earning more money than he. Also, he wondered what Harvey Duncombe and the rest of the bunch would have thought had they known.
Toppy followed the agent to the stable behind the hotel, where Simmons routed out an old hunchbacked driver who soon brought forth a team of rangy bays drawing a light double-seated sleigh.
“Company outfit,” explained Simmons. “Have to have a team; one horse can’t make it. You can ride in the front seat with the driver. The lady will ride behind.”
As Toppy clambered in Simmons hurriedly whispered something in the ear of the driver, who was fastening a trace. The hunchback nodded.
“I got this job because I can keep my mouth shut,” he muttered. “Don’t you worry about anybody pumping me.”
He stepped in beside Toppy; and the bays, prancing in the snow, went around to the front of the hotel on the run. There was a wait of a few minutes; then Simmons came out, followed by the girl carrying her suitcase. Toppy sprang out and took it from her hand.
“You people are going to be together on a long drive, so I’d better introduce you,” said Simmons. “Miss Pearson, Mr. ——”
“Treplin,” said Toppy honestly.
“Treplin,” concluded Simmons. “New bookkeeper, new blacksmith’s helper. Get in the back seat, Miss Pearson. Cover yourself well up with those robes. Bundle in—that’s right. Put the suitcase under your feet. That’s right. All right, Jerry,” he drawled to the driver. “You’d better keep going pretty steady to make it before dark.”
“Don’t nobody need to tell me my business,” said the surly hunchback, tightening the lines; and without any more ado they were off, the snow flying from the heels of the mettlesome bays.
For the first few miles the horses, fresh from the stable and exhilarated to the dancing-point by the sun, air and snow, provided excitement which prevented any attempt at conversation. Then, when their dancing and shying had ceased and they had settled down to a steady, long-legged jog that placed mile after mile of the white road behind them with the regularity of a machine, Toppy turned his eyes toward the girl in the back seat.
He quickly turned them to the front again. Miss Pearson, snuggled down to her chin in the thick sleigh-robes, her eyes squinting deliciously beneath the sharp sun, was studying him with a frankness that was disconcerting, and Toppy, probably for the first time in his life, felt himself gripped by a great shyness and confusion. There was wonderment in the girl’s eyes, and suspicion.
“She’s wise,” thought Toppy sadly. “She knows I’ve been hitting it up, and she knows I made up my mind to come out here after I talked with her. A fine opinion she must have of me! Well, I deserve it. But just the same I’ve got to see the thing through now. I can’t stand for her going out all alone to a place with a reputation like Hell Camp. I’m a dead one with her, all right; but I’ll stick around and see that she gets a square deal.”
Consequently the drive, which Toppy had hoped would lead to more conversation and a closer acquaintance with the girl, resolved itself into a silent, monotonous affair which made him distinctly uncomfortable. He looked back at her again. This time also he caught her eyes full upon him, but this time after an instant’s scrutiny she looked away with a trace of hardness about her lips.
“I’m in bad at the start with her, sure,” groaned Toppy inwardly. “She doesn’t want a thing to do with me, and quite right at that.”
His tentative efforts at opening a conversation with the driver met instant and convincing failure.
“I hear they’ve got quite a place out here,” began Toppy casually.
“None of my business if they have,” grunted the driver.
Toppy laughed.
“You’re a sociable brute! Why don’t you bark and be done with it?”
The driver viciously pulled the team to a dead stop and turned upon Toppy with a look that could come only from a spirit of complete malevolence.
“Don’t try to talk to me, young feller,” he snapped, showing old yellow teeth. “My job is to haul you out there, and that’s all. I don’t talk. Don’t waste your time trying to make me. Giddap!”
He cut viciously at the horses with his whip, pulled his head into the collar of his fur coat with the motion of a turtle retiring into its shell, and for the rest of the drive spoke only to the horses.
Toppy, snubbed by the driver and feeling himself shunned, perhaps even despised, by Miss Pearson, now had plenty of time to think over the situation calmly. The crisp November air whipping his face as the sleigh sped steadily along drove from his brain the remaining fumes of Harvey Buncombe’s champagne. He saw the whole affair clearly now, and he promptly called himself a great fool.
What business was it of his if a girl wanted to go out to work in a place like Hell Camp? Probably it was all right. Probably there was no necessity, no excuse for his having made a fool of himself by going with her. Why had he done it, anyhow? Getting interested in anything because of a girl was strange conduct for him. He couldn’t call to mind a single tangible reason for his actions. He had acted on the impulse, as he had done scores of times before; and, as he had also done scores of times before, he felt that he had made a fool of himself.
He tried to catch the girl’s eyes once more, to read in them some sign of relenting, some excuse for opening a conversation. But as he turned his head Miss Pearson also turned and looked away with uncompromising severity.