PAGE 2
A Border Ruffian
by
II.
The slight stir incident to the entrance of this offensive stranger aroused Mr. Hutchinson Port from his agreeable slumber. He yawned slightly, cast a disparaging glance upon the mountains, and then, drawing an especially good cigar from his case, betook himself to the smoking-room. Grace did not realize his intentions until they had become accomplished deeds.
Mr. Hutchinson Port–although a member (on the retired list) of the First City Troop, and therefore, presumably, inflamed with the martial spirit characteristic of that ancient and honorable organization–was not, perhaps, just the man that a person knowing in such matters would have selected to pit against a New Mexico desperado in a hand-to-hand conflict. But Grace felt her heart sink a little as she saw the round and rather pursy form of her natural protector walk away into the depths of a mirror at the forward end of the car, and so vanish. And in this same mirror she beheld, seated only two sections behind her, the scowling ruffian!
The situation, as Grace regarded it, was an alarming one; and it was the more trying to her nerves because it did not, reasonably, admit of action. She was aware that the very presence of a ruffian in a Pullman car was in the nature of a promise, on his part, that for the time being it was not his intention either to murder or to rob–unless, indeed, he were one of a robber band, and was awaiting the appearance of his confederates. For her either to call her uncle, or break in upon the Emersonian seclusion of her aunt, she felt would not be well received, under the circumstances, by either of these her relatives. As to the porter, that sable functionary had vanished; there was no electric bell, and the car, one of a Pullman train, had no conductor.
For protection, therefore, should need for protection arise, Grace perceived that she must depend upon the one other passenger. (They had lingered so long amid the delights of a Santa Barbara spring that they were journeying in that pleasant time of year when spring travel eastward has ended, and summer travel has not yet begun.) This one other passenger was a little man of dapper build and dapper dress, whose curiously-shaped articles of luggage betokened his connection with commercial affairs. Grace was forced to own, as she now for the first time regarded him attentively, that he did not seem to be wrought of the stern stuff out of which, as a rule, champions are made.
As she thus looked upon him, she was startled to find that he was looking very fixedly upon her; and she was further startled, as their eyes met, by the appearance upon his face of a friendly smile. She would have been vastly surprised had she been aware that this little person labored under the belief that he had already effected a favorable lodgement in her good graces; and she would have been both surprised and horrified could she have known that each of her own strictly confidential smiles during her day-dream had been accepted by the commercial traveller as intended for himself; and had been met, as they successively appeared, by his own smiles in answer. Yet this was the actual state of the case; and the little man’s soul was uplifted by the thought that here was a fresh proof, and a very pleasant one, of how irresistible were his personal appearance and his personal charm of manner when arrayed in battery against any one of the gentler sex.
Viewed from the stand-point of his experience, this inquiring look and its attendant eye-encounter indicated that the moment for more pronounced action now had arrived. With the assured air of one who possibly may be repulsed, but who certainly cannot be defeated, he arose from his seat, crossed to Miss Grace Winthrop’s section, and, with a pleasant remark to the effect that in travelling it always was nice to be sociable, edged himself into the seat beside her.