The Affair at Grover Station
by Willa Cather
      The following is a Gaslight etext.


I heard this story sitting on the rear platform of an accommodation freight that 
crawled along through the brown, sun-dried wilderness between Grover Station and 
Cheyenne. The narrator was "Terrapin" Rodgers who had been a classmate of mine 
at Princeton, and who was then cashier in the B---- railroad office at Cheyenne. 
Rodgers was an Albany boy, but after his father failed in business, his uncle 
got "Terrapin" a position on a western railroad, and he left college and 
disappeared completely from our little world, and it was not until I was sent 
West, by the University with a party of geologists who were digging for fossils 
in the region about Sterling, Colorado, that I saw him again. On this particular 
occasion Rodgers had been down at Sterling to spend Sunday with me, and I 
accompanied him when he returned to Cheyenne. 
  When the train pulled out of Grover Station, we were sitting smoking on the 
rear platform, watching the pale yellow disk of the moon that was just rising 
and that drenched the naked, gray plains in a soft lemon-colored light. The 
telegraph poles scored the sky like a musical staff as they flashed by, and the 
stars, seen between the wires, looked like the notes of some erratic symphony. 
The stillness of the night and the loneliness and barrenness of the plains were 
conducive to an uncanny train of thought. We had just left Grover Station behind 
us, and the murder of the station agent at Grover, which had occurred the 
previous winter, was still the subject of much conjecturing and theorizing all 
along that line of railroad. Rodgers had been an intimate friend of the murdered 
agent, and it was said that he knew more about the affair than any other living 
man, but with that peculiar reticence which at college had won him the sobriquet 
"Terrapin," he had kept what he knew to himself, and even the most accomplished 
reporter on the New York Journal, who had traveled halfway across the continent 
for the express purpose of pumping Rodgers, had given him up as impossible. But 
I had known Rodgers a long time, and since I had been grubbing in the chalk 
about Sterling, we had fallen into a habit of exchanging confidences, for it is 
good to see an old face in a strange land. So, as the little red station house 
at Grover faded into the distance, I asked him point blank what he knew about 
the murder of Lawrence O'Toole. Rodgers took a long pull at his black briar pipe 
as he answered me. 
  "Well, yes, I could tell you something about it, but the question is how much 
you'd believe, and whether you could restrain yourself from reporting it to the 
Society for Psychical Research. I never told the story but once, and then it was 
to the Division Superintendent, and when I finished the old gentleman asked if I 
were a drinking man, and remarking that a fertile imagination was not a 
desirable quality in a railroad employee, said it would be just as well if the 
story went no further. You see it's a grewsome tale, and someway we don't like 
to be reminded that there are more things in heaven and earth than our systems 
of philosophy can grapple with. However, I should rather like to tell the story 
to a man who would look at it objectively and leave it in the domain of pure 
incident where it belongs. It would unburden my mind, and I'd like to get a 
scientific man's opinion on the yarn. But I suppose I'd better begin at the 
beginning, with the dance which preceded the tragedy, just as such things follow 
each other in a play. I notice that Destiny, who is a good deal of an artist in 
her way, frequently falls back upon that elementary principle of contrast to 
make things interesting for us. 
  "It was the thirty-first of December, the morning of the incoming Governor's 
inaugural ball, and I got down to the office early, for I had a heavy day's work 
ahead of me, and I was going to the dance and wanted to close up by six o'clock. 
I had scarcely unlocked the door when I heard someone calling Cheyenne on the 
wire, and hurried over to the instrument to see what was wanted. It was Lawrence 
O'Toole, at Grover, and he said he was coming up for the ball on the extra, due 
in Cheyenne at nine o'clock that night. He wanted me to go up to see Miss 
Masterson and ask her if she could go with him. He had had some trouble in 
getting leave of absence, as the last regular train for Cheyenne then left 
Grover at 5:45 in the afternoon, and as there was an eastbound going through 
Grover at 7:30. The dispatcher didn't want him away, in case there should be 
orders for the 7:30 train. So Larry had made no arrangement with Miss Masterson, 
as he was uncertain about getting up until he was notified about the extra. 
  "I telephoned Miss Masterson and delivered Larry's message. She replied that 
she had made an arrangement to go to the dance with Mr. Freymark, but added 
laughingly that no other arrangement held when Larry could come. 
  "About noon Freymark dropped in at the office, and I suspected he'd got his 
time from Miss Masterson. While he was hanging around, Larry called me up to 
tell me that Helen's flowers would be up from Denver on the Union Pacific 
passenger at five, and he asked me to have them sent up to her promptly and to 
call for her that evening in case the extra should be late. Freymark, of course, 
listened to the message, and when the sounder stopped, he smiled in a slow, 
disagreeable way, and saying, 'Thank you. That's all I wanted to know,' left the 
office. 
  "Lawrence O'Toole had been my predecessor in the cashier's office at Cheyenne, 
and he needs a little explanation now that he is under ground, though when he 
was in the world of living men, he explained himself better than any man I have 
ever met, East or West. I've knocked about a good deal since I cut loose from 
Princeton, and I've found that there are a great many good fellows in the world, 
but I've not found many better than Larry. I think I can say, without stretching 
a point, that he was the most popular man on the Division. He had a faculty of 
making everyone like him that amounted to a sort of genius. When he first went 
to working on the road, he was the agent's assistant down at Sterling, a mere 
kid fresh from Ireland, without a dollar in his pocket, and no sort of backing 
in the world but his quick wit and handsome face. It was a face that served him 
as a sight draft, good in all banks. 
  "Freymark was cashier at the Cheyenne office then, but he had been up to some 
dirty work with the company, and when it fell in the line of Larry's duty to 
expose him, he did so without hesitating. Eventually Freymark was discharged, 
and Larry was made cashier in his place. There was, after that, naturally, 
little love lost between them, and to make matters worse, Helen Masterson took a 
fancy to Larry, and Freymark had begun to consider himself pretty solid in that 
direction. I doubt whether Miss Masterson ever really liked the blackguard, but 
he was a queer fish, and she was a queer girl and she found him interesting. 
  "Old John J. Masterson, her father, had been United States Senator from 
Wyoming, and Helen had been educated at Wellesley and had lived in Washington a 
good deal. She found Cheyenne dull and had got into the Washington way of 
tolerating anything but stupidity, and Freymark certainly was not stupid. He 
passed as an Alsatian Jew, but he had lived a good deal in Paris and had been 
pretty much all over the world, and spoke the more general European languages 
fluently. He was a wiry, sallow, unwholesome looking man, slight and meagerly 
built, and he looked as though he had been dried through and through by the 
blistering heat of the tropics. His movements were as lithe and agile as those 
of a eat, and invested with a certain unusual, stealthy grace. His eyes were 
small and black as bright jet beads; his hair very thick and coarse and 
straight, black with a sort of purple luster to it, and he always wore it 
correctly parted in the middle and brushed smoothly about his ears. He had a 
pair of the most impudent red lips that closed over white, regular teeth. His 
hands, of which he took the greatest care, were the yellow, wrinkled hands of an 
old man, and shrivelled at the finger-tips, though I don't think he could have 
been much over thirty. The long and short of it is that the fellow was uncanny. 
You somehow felt that there was that in his present or in his past, or in his 
destiny which isolated him from other men. He dressed in excellent taste, was 
always accommodating, with the most polished manners and an address 
extravagantly deferential. He went into cattle after he lost his job with the 
company, and had an interest in a ranch ten miles out, though he spent most of 
his time in Cheyenne at the Capitol card rooms. He had an insatiable passion for 
gambling, and he was one of the few men who make it pay. 
  "About a week before the dance, Larry's cousin, Harry Burns, who was a 
reporter on the London Times, stopped in Cheyenne on his way to 'Frisco, and 
Larry came up to meet him. We took Burns up to the club and I noticed that he 
acted rather queerly when Freymark came in. Burns went down to Grover to spend a 
day with Larry, and on Saturday Larry wired me to come down and spend Sunday 
with him, as he had important news for me. 
  "I went, and the gist of his information was that Freymark, then going by 
another name, had figured in a particularly ugly London scandal that happened to 
be in Burns's beat, and his record had been exposed. He was, indeed, from Paris, 
but there was not a drop of Jewish blood in his veins, and he dated from farther 
back than Israel. His father was a French soldier who, during his service in the 
East, had bought a Chinese slave girl, had become attached to her, and married 
her, and after her death had brought her child back to Europe with him. He had 
entered the civil service and held several subordinate offices in the capital, 
where his son was educated. The boy, socially ambitious and extremely sensitive 
about his Asiatic blood, after having been blackballed at a club, had left and 
lived by an exceedingly questionable traffic in London, assuming a Jewish 
patronymic to account for his oriental complexion and traits of feature. That 
explained everything. That explained why Freymark's hands were those of a 
centenarian. In his veins crept the sluggish amphibious blood of a race that was 
already old when Jacob tended the flocks of Laban upon the hills of Padan-Aram, 
a race that was in its mort cloth before Europe's swaddling clothes were made. 
  "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 on 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 Laramie, 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: 
  "'You see I've forgiven this morning entirely.' 
  "She answered him rather coolly: 
  "'Ah, but you are constitutionally forgiving. However, I'll be fair and 
forgive too. It's more comfortable.' 
  "Then he said in a slow, insinuating tone, and I could fairly see him thrust 
out those impudent red lips of his as he said it: 'If I can teach you to 
forgive, I wonder whether I could not also teach you to forget? I almost think I 
could. At any rate I shall make you remember this night. 
    Rappelles-toi lorsque les destinées
    M'auront de toi pour jamais séparé.' 
  "As they came in, I saw him slip one of Larry's red roses into his pocket. 
  "It was not until near the end of the dance that the clock of destiny sounded 
the first stroke of the tragedy. I remember how gay the scene was, so gay that I 
had almost forgotten my anxiety in the music, flowers and laughter. The 
orchestra was playing a waltz, drawing the strains out long and sweet like the 
notes of a flute, and Freymark was dancing with Helen. I was not dancing myself 
then, and suddenly I noticed some confusion among the waiters who stood watching 
by one of the doors, and Larry's black dog, Duke, all foam at the mouth, shot in 
the side and bleeding, dashed in through the door and eluding the caterer's men, 
ran half the length of the hall and threw himself at Freymark's feet, uttering a 
howl piteous enough to herald any sort of calamity. Freymark, who had not seen 
him before, turned with an exclamation of rage and a face absolutely livid and 
kicked the wounded brute halfway across the slippery floor. There was something 
fiendishly brutal and horrible in the episode, it was the breaking out of the 
barbarian blood through his mask of European civilization, a jet of black mud 
that spurted up from some nameless pest hole of filthy heathen cities. The music 
stopped, people began moving about in a confused mass, and I saw Helen's eyes 
seeking mine appealingly. I hurried to her, and by the time I reached her 
Freymark had disappeared. 
  "'Get the carriage and take care of Duke,' she said, and her voice trembled 
like that of one shivering with cold. 
  "When we were in the carriage she spread one of the robes on her knee, and I 
lifted the dog up to her, and she took him in her arms, comforting him. 
  "'Where is Larry, and what does all this mean?' she asked. 'You can't put me 
off any longer, for I danced with a man who came up on the extra.' 
  "Then I made a clean breast of it, and told her what I knew, which was little 
enough. 
  "'Do you think he is ill?' she asked. 
  "I replied, 'I don't know what to think. I'm all at sea.' For since the 
appearance of the dog, I was genuinely alarmed. 
  "She was silent for a long time, but when the rays of the electric street 
lights flashed at intervals into the carriage, I could see that she was leaning 
back with her eyes closed and the dog's nose against her throat. At last she 
said with a note of entreaty in her voice, 'Can't you think of anything?' I saw 
that she was thoroughly frightened and told her that it would probably all end 
in a joke, and that I would telephone her as soon as I heard from Larry, and 
would more than likely have something amusing to tell her. 
  "It was snowing hard when we reached the Senator's, and when we got out of the 
carriage she gave Duke tenderly over to me and I remember how she dragged on my 
arm and how played out and exhausted she seemed. 
  "'You really must not worry at all,' I said. 'You know how Uncertain railroad 
men are. It's sure to be better at the next inaugural ball; we'll all be dancing 
together then.' 
  "'The next inaugural ball,' she said as we went up the steps, putting out her 
hand to catch the snow-flakes. 'That seems a long way off.' 
  "I got down to the office late next morning, and before I had time to try 
Grover, the dispatcher at Holyoke called me up to ask whether Larry were still 
in Cheyenne. He couldn't raise Grover, he said, and he wanted to give Larry 
train orders for 151, the eastbound passenger. When he heard what I had to say, 
he told me I had better go down to Grover on 151 myself, as the storm threatened 
to tie up all the trains and we might look for trouble. 
  "I had the veterinary surgeon fix up Duke's side, and I put him in the express 
car, and boarded 151 with a mighty cold, uncomfortable sensation in the region 
of my diaphragm. 
  "It had snowed all night long, and the storm had developed into a blizzard, 
and the passenger had difficulty in making any headway at all. 
  "When we got into Grover I thought it was the most desolate spot I had ever 
looked on, and as the train pulled out, leaving me there, I felt like sending a 
message of farewell to the world. You know what Grover is, a red box of a 
station, section house barricaded by coal sheds and a little group of dwellings 
at the end of everything, with the desert running out on every side to the sky 
line. The houses and station were covered with a coating of snow that clung to 
them like wet plaster, and the siding was one deep snow drift, banked against 
the station door. The plain was a wide, white ocean of swirling, drifting snow, 
that beat and broke like the thrash of the waves in the merciless wind that 
swept, with nothing to break it, from the Rockies to the Missouri. 
  "When I opened the station door, the snow fell in upon the floor, and Duke sat 
down by the empty, fireless stove and began to howl and whine in a heartbreaking 
fashion. Larry's sleeping room upstairs was empty. Downstairs, everything was in 
order, and all the station work had been done up. Apparently the last thing 
Larry had done was to bill out a car of wool from the Oasis sheep ranch for 
Dewey, Gould & Co., Boston. The car had gone out on 153, the eastbound that left 
Grover at seven o'clock the night before, so he must have been there at that 
time. I copied the bill in the copy book, and went over to the section house to 
make inquiries. 
  "The section boss was getting ready to go out to look after his track. He said 
he had seen O'Toole at 5:30, when the westbound passenger went through, and, not 
having seen him since, supposed he was still in Cheyenne. I went over to Larry's 
boarding house, and the woman said he must be in Cheyenne, as he had eaten his 
supper at five o'clock the night before, so that he would have time to get his 
station work done and dress. The little girl, she said, had gone over at five to 
tell him that supper was ready. I questioned the child carefully. She said there 
was another man, a stranger, in the station with Larry when she went in and that 
though she didn't hear anything they said, and Larry was sitting with his chair 
tilted back and his feet on the stove, she somehow had thought they were 
quarreling. The stranger, she said, was standing; he had a fur coat on and his 
eyes snapped like he was mad, and she was afraid of him. I asked her if she 
could recall anything else about him, and she said, 'Yes he had very red lips.' 
When I heard that, my heart grew cold as a snow lump, and when I went out the 
wind seemed to go clear through me. It was evident enough that Freymark had gone 
down there to make trouble had quarreled with Larry and had boarded either the 
5:30 passenger or the extra, and got the conductor to let him off at his ranch, 
and accounted for his late appearance at the dance. 
  "It was five o'clock then, but the 5:30 train was two hours late, so there was 
nothing to do but sit down and wait for the conductor, who had gone out on the 
seven o'clock eastbound the night before, and who must have seen Larry when he 
picked up the car of wool. It was growing dark by that time. The sky was a dull 
lead color, and the snow had drifted about the little town until it was almost 
buried, and was still coming down so fast that you could scarcely see your hand 
before you. 
  "I was never so glad to hear anything as that whistle, when old 153 came 
lumbering and groaning in through the snow. I ran out on the platform to meet 
her, and her headlight looked like the face of an old friend. I caught the 
conductor's arm the minute he stepped off the train, but he wouldn't talk until 
he got in by the fire. He said he hadn't seen O'Toole at all the night before, 
but he had found the bill for the wool car on the table, with a note from Larry 
asking him to take the car out on the Q.T., and he had concluded that Larry had 
gone up to Cheyenne on the 5:30. I wired the Cheyenne office and managed to 
catch the express clerk who had gone through on the extra the night before. He 
wired me saying that he had not seen Larry board the extra, but that his dog had 
crept into his usual place in the express car, and he had supposed Larry was in 
the coach. He had seen Freymark get on at Grover, and the train had slowed up a 
trifle at his ranch to let him off, for Freymark stood in with some of the boys 
and sent his cattle shipments our way. 
  "When the night fairly closed down on me, I began to wonder how a gay, 
expensive fellow like O'Toole had ever stood six months at Grover. The snow had 
let up by that time, and the stars were beginning to glitter cold and bright 
through the hurrying clouds. I put on my ulster and went outside. I began a 
minute tour of inspection, I went through empty freight cars run down by the 
siding, searched the coal houses and primitive cellar, examining them carefully, 
and calling O'Toole's name. Duke at my heels dragged himself painfully about, 
but seemed as much at sea as I, and betrayed the nervous suspense and altertness 
of a bird dog that has lost his game. 
  "I went back to the office and took the big station lamp upstairs to make a 
more careful examination of Larry's sleeping room. The suit of clothes that he 
usually wore at his work was hanging on the wall. His shaving things were lying 
about, and I recognized the silver-backed military hair brushes that Miss 
Masterson had given him at Christmas time, lying on his chiffonier. The upper 
drawer was open and a pair of white kid gloves was lying on the corner. A white 
string tie hung across his pipe rack, it was crumpled and had evidently proved 
unsatisfactory when he tied it. On the chiffonier lay several clean 
handkerchiefs with holes in them, where he had unfolded them and thrown them by 
in a hasty search for a whole one. A black silk muffler hung on the chair back, 
and a top hat was set awry on the head of a plaster cast of Parnell, Larry's 
hero. His dress suit was missing, so there was no doubt that he had dressed for 
the party. His overcoat lay on his trunk and his dancing shoes were on the 
floor, at the foot of the bed beside his everyday ones. I knew that his pumps 
were a little tight, he had joked about them when I was down the Sunday before 
the dance, but he had only one pair, and he couldn't have got another in Grover 
if he had tried himself. That set me to thinking. He was a dainty fellow about 
his shoes and I knew his collection pretty well. I went to his closet and found 
them all there. Even granting him a prejudice against overcoats, I couldn't 
conceive of his going out in that stinging weather without shoes. I noticed that 
a surgeon's case, such as are carried on passenger trains, and which Larry had 
once appropriated in Cheyenne, was open, and that the roll of medicated cotton 
had been pulled out and recently used. Each discovery I made served only to add 
to my perplexity. Granted that Freymark had been there, and granted that he had 
played the boy an ugly trick, he could not have spirited him away without the 
knowledge of the train crew. 
  "'Duke, old doggy,' I said to the poor spaniel who was sniffing and whining 
about the bed, 'you haven't done your duty. You must have seen what went on 
between your master and that clam-blooded Asiatic, and you ought to be able to 
give me a tip of some sort.' 
  "I decided to go to bed and make a fresh start on the ugly business in the 
morning. The bed looked as though someone had been lying on it, so I started to 
beat it up a little before I got in. I took off the pillow and as I pulled up 
the mattress, on the edge of the ticking at the head of the bed, I saw a dark 
red stain about the size of my hand. I felt the cold sweat come out on me, and 
my hands were dangerously unsteady, as I carried the lamp over and set it down 
on the chair by the bed. But Duke was too quick for me, he had seen that stain 
and leaping on the bed began sniffling it, and whining like a dog that is being 
whipped to death. I bent down and felt it with my fingers. It was dry but the 
color and stiffness were unmistakably those of coagulated blood. I caught up my 
coat and vest and ran downstairs with Duke yelping at my heels. My first impulse 
was to go and call someone, but from the platform not a single light was 
visible, and I knew the section men had been in bed for hours. I remembered 
then, that Larry was often annoyed by hemorrhages at the nose in that high 
altitude, but even that did not altogether quiet my nerves, and I realized that 
sleeping in that bed was quite out of the question. 
  "Larry always kept a supply of brandy and soda on hand, so I made myself a 
stiff drink and filled the stove and locked the door, turned down the lamp and 
lay down on the operator's table. I had often slept there when I was night 
operator. At first it was impossible to sleep, for Duke kept starting up and 
limping to the door and scratching at it, yelping nervously. He kept this up 
until I was thoroughly unstrung, and though I'm ordinarily cool enough, there 
wasn't money enough in Wyoming to have bribed me to open that door. I felt cold 
all over every time I went near it, and I even drew the big rusty bolt that was 
never used, and it seemed to me that it groaned heavily as I drew it, or perhaps 
it was the wind outside that groaned. As for Duke, I threatened to put him out, 
and boxed his ears until I hurt his feelings, and he lay down in front of the 
door with his muzzle between his paws and his eyes shining like live coals and 
riveted on the crack under the door. The situation was grewsome enough, but the 
liquor had made me drowsy and at last I fell asleep. 
  "It must have been about three o'clock in the morning that I was awakened by 
the crying of the dog, a whimper low, continuous and pitiful, and indescribably 
human. While I was blinking my eyes in an effort to get thoroughly awake, I 
heard another sound, the grating sound of chalk on a wooden blackboard, or of a 
soft pencil on a slate. I turned my head to the right, and saw a man standing 
with his back to me chalking something on the bulletin board. At a glance I 
recognized the broad, high shoulders and the handsome head of my friend. Yet 
there was that about the figure which kept me from calling his name or from 
moving a muscle where I lay. He finished his writing and dropped the chalk, and 
I distinctly heard its click as it fell. He made a gesture as though he were 
dusting his fingers, and then turned facing me, holding his left hand in front 
of his mouth. I saw him clearly in the soft light of the station lamp. He wore 
his dress clothes, and began moving toward the door silently as a shadow in his 
black stocking feet. There was about his movements an indescribable stiffness, 
as though his limbs had been frozen. His face was chalky white, his hair seemed 
damp and was plastered down close about his temples. His eyes were colorless 
jellies, dull as lead, and staring straight before him. When he reached the 
door, he lowered the hand he held before his mouth to lift the latch. His face 
was turned squarely toward me, and the lower jaw had fallen and was set rigidly 
upon his collar, the mouth was wide open and was stuffed full of white cotton! 
Then I knew it was a dead man's face I looked upon. 
  "The door opened, and that stiff black figure in stockings walked as 
noiselessly as a cat out into the night. I think I went quite mad then. I dimly 
remember that I rushed out upon the siding and ran up and down screaming, 
'Larry, Larry!' until the wind seemed to echo my call. The stars were out in 
myriads, and the snow glistened in their light, but I could see nothing but the 
wide, white plain, not even a dark shadow anywhere. When at last I found myself 
back in the station, I saw Duke lying before the door and dropped on my knees 
beside him, calling him by name. But Duke was past calling back. Master and dog 
had gone together, and I dragged him into the corner and covered his face, for 
his eyes were colorless and soft, like the eyes of that horrible face, once so 
beloved. 
  "The blackboard? O, I didn't forget that. I had chalked the time of the 
accommodation on it the night before, from sheer force of habit, for it isn't 
customary to mark the time of trains in unimportant stations like Grover. My 
writing had been rubbed out by a moist hand, for I could see the finger marks 
clearly, and in place of it was written in blue chalk simply, 
C. B. & Q. 26387. 
  "I sat there drinking brandy and muttering to myself before that blackboard 
until those blue letters danced up and down, like magic lantern pictures when 
you jiggle the slides. I drank until the sweat poured off me like rain and my 
teeth chattered, and I turned sick at the stomach. At last an idea flashed upon 
me. I snatched the waybill off the hook. The car of wool that had left Grover 
for Boston the night before was numbered 26387. 
  "I must have got through the rest of the night somehow, for when the sun came 
up red and angry over the white plains, the section boss found me sitting by the 
stove, the lamp burning full blaze, the brandy bottle empty beside me, and with 
but one idea in my head, that box car 26387 must be stopped and opened as soon 
as possible, and that somehow it would explain. 
  "I figured that we could easily catch it in Omaha, and wired the freight agent 
there to go through it carefully and report anything unusual. That night I got a 
wire from the agent stating that the body of a man had been found under a 
woolsack at one end of the car with a fan and an invitation to the inaugural 
ball at Cheyenne in the pocket of his dress coat. I wired him not to disturb the 
body until I arrived, and started for Omaha. Before I left Grover the Cheyenne 
office wired me that Freymark had left the town, going west over the Union 
Pacific. The company detectives never found him. 
  "The matter was clear enough then. Being a railroad man, he had hidden the 
body and sealed up the car and billed it out, leaving a note for the conductor. 
Since he was of a race without conscience or sensibilities, and since his past 
was more infamous than his birth, he had boarded the extra and had gone to the 
ball and danced with Miss Masterson with blood undried upon his hands. 
  "When I saw Larry O'Toole again, he was lying stiff and stark in the 
undertakers' rooms in Omaha. He was clad in his dress clothes, with black 
stockings on his feet, as I had seen him forty-eight hours before. Helen 
Masterson's fan was in his pocket. His mouth was wide open and stuffed full of 
white cotton. 
  "He had been shot in the mouth, the bullet lodging between the third and 
fourth vertebrae. The hemorrhage had been very slight and had been checked by 
the cotton. The quarrel had taken place about five in the afternoon. After 
supper Larry had dressed, all but his shoes, and had lain down to snatch a wink 
of sleep, trusting to the whistle of the extra to waken him. Freymark had gone 
back and shot him while he was asleep, afterward placing his body in the wool 
car, which, but for my telegram, would not have been opened for weeks. 
  "That's the whole story. There is nothing more to tell except one detail that 
I did not mention to the superintendent. When I said goodbye to the boy before 
the undertaker and coroner took charge of the body, I lifted his right hand to 
take off a ring that Miss Masterson had given him and the ends of the fingers 
were covered with blue chalk." 
(End.)