the attention of Gertrude, reading alone in her
car, was attracted to a stout boy under an enormous hat clambering with
difficulty up the railing of the observation platform. In one arm he
struggled for a while with a large bundle wrapped in paper, then
dropping back he threw the package up over the rail, and starting
empty-handed gained the platform and picked up his parcel. He fished a
letter from his pistol pocket, stared fearlessly in at Gertrude Brock
and knocked on the glass panel between them.

"Laundry parcels are to be delivered to the porter in the forward car,"
said Gertrude, opening the door slightly.

As she spoke the boy's hat blew off and sailed down the platform, but
he maintained some dignity. "I don't carry laundry. I carry
telegrams. The front door was locked. I seen you sitting in there all
alone, and I've got a note and had orders to give it to you personally,
and this package personally, and not to nobody else, so I climbed over."

"Stop a moment," commanded Gertrude, for the heavy messenger was
starting for the railing before she quite comprehended. "Wait until I
see what you have here." The boy, with his hands on the railing, was
letting himself down.

"My hat's blowin' off. There ain't any answer and the charges is paid."

"Will you wait?" exclaimed Gertrude, impatiently. The very handwriting
on the note annoyed her. While unfamiliar, her instinct connected it
with one person from whom she was determined to receive no
communication. She hesitated as she looked at her carefully written
name. She wanted to return the communication unopened; but how could
she be sure who had sent it? With the impatience of uncertainty she
ripped open the envelope.

The note was neither addressed nor signed.

"I have no right to keep this after you leave; perhaps I had no right
to keep it at all. But in returning it to you I surely may thank you
for the impulse that made you throw it over me the morning I lay asleep
behind the Spider dike."

She tore the package partly open--it was her Newmarket coat. Bundling
it up again she walked hastily to her compartment. For some moments
she remained within; when she came out the messenger boy, his hat now
low over his ears, was sitting in her chair looking at the illustrated
paper she had laid down. Gertrude suppressed her astonishment; she
felt somehow overawed by the unconventionalities of the West.

"Boy, what are you doing here?"

"You said,