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The Affair at Grover Station
by
"Of course, the question at once came up as to what ought to be done with Burns’s information. Cheyenne clubs are not exclusive, but a Chinaman who had been engaged in Freymark’s peculiarly unsavory traffic would be disbarred in almost any region outside of Whitechapel. One thing was sure: Miss Masterson must be informed of the matter at once.
"’On second thought,’ said Larry, ‘I guess I’d better tell her myself. It will have to be done easy like, not to hurt her self-respect too much. Like as not I’ll go off my head the first time I see him and call him rat-eater to his face.’
"Well, to get back to the day of the dance, I was wondering whether Larry would stay over to tell Miss Masterson about it the next day, for of course he couldn’t spring such a thing on a girl at a party.
"That evening I dressed early and went down to the station at nine to meet Larry. The extra came in, but no Larry. I saw Connelly, the conductor, and asked him if he had seen anything of O’Toole, but he said he hadn’t, that the station at Grover was open when he came through, but that he found no train orders and couldn’t raise anyone, so supposed O’Toole had come up on 153. I went back to the office and called Grover, but got no answer. Then I sat down at the instrument and called for fifteen minutes straight. I wanted to go then and hunt up the conductor of 153, the passenger that went through Grover at 5:30 in the afternoon, and ask him what he knew about Larry, but it was then 9:45 and I knew Miss Masterson would be waiting, so I jumped into the carriage and told the driver to make up time. On my way to the Mastersons’ I did some tall thinking. I could find no explanation for O’Toole’s nonappearance, but the business of the moment was to invent one for Miss Masterson that would neither alarm nor offend her. I couldn’t exactly tell her he wasn’t coming, for he might show up yet, so I decided to say the extra was late, and I didn’t know when it would be in.
"Miss Masterson had been an exceptionally beautiful girl to begin with, and life had done a great deal for her. Fond as I was of Larry, I used to wonder whether a girl who had led such a full and independent existence would ever find the courage to face life with a railroad man who was so near the bottom of a ladder that is so long and steep.
"She came down the stairs in one of her Paris gowns that are as meat and drink to Cheyenne society reporters, with her arms full of American Beauty roses and her eyes and cheeks glowing. I noticed the roses then, though I didn’t 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 Lararmie, 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: