The Danger Trail eBook

CHAPTER II

LIPS THAT SPEAK NOT

Howland was not a man easily susceptible to a pair
of eyes and a pretty face. The practical side
of his nature was too much absorbed in its devices
and schemes for the building of material things to
allow the breaking in of romance. At least Howland
had always complimented himself on this fact, and
he laughed a little nervously as he went back to his
seat near the window. He was conscious that a
flush of unusual excitement had leaped into his cheeks
and already the practical side of him was ashamed
of that to which the romantic side had surrendered.

“The deuce, but she was pretty!” he excused
himself. “And those eyes—­”

Suddenly he checked himself. There had been more
than the eyes; more than the pretty face! Why
had the girl paused in front of the window? Why
had she looked at him so intently, as though on the
point of speech? The smile and the flush left
his face as these questions came to him and he wondered
if he had failed to comprehend something which she
had meant him to understand. After all, might
it not have been a case of mistaken identity?
For a moment she had believed that she recognized him—­then,
seeing her mistake, had passed swiftly down the street.
Under ordinary circumstances Howland would have accepted
this solution of the incident. But to-night he
was in an unusual mood, and it quickly occurred to
him that even if his supposition were true it did
not explain the pallor in the girl’s face and
the strange entreaty which had glowed for an instant
in her eyes.

Anyway it was none of his business, and he walked
casually to the door. At the end of the street,
a quarter of a mile distant, a red light burned feebly
over the front of a Chinese restaurant, and in a mechanical
fashion his footsteps led him in that direction.

“I’ll drop in and have a cup of tea,”
he assured himself, throwing away the stub of his
cigar and filling his lungs with great breaths of the
cold, dry air. “Lord, but it’s a glorious
night! I wish Van Horn could see it.”

He stopped and turned his eyes again into the North.
Its myriad stars, white and unshivering, the elusive
play of the mysterious lights hovering over the pole,
and the black edge of the wilderness beyond the river
were holding a greater and greater fascination for
him. Since morning, when he had looked on that
wilderness for the first time in his life, new blood
had entered into him, and he rejoiced that it was this
wonderful world which was to hold for him success and
fortune. Never had he dreamed that the mere joy
of living would appeal to him as it did now; that
the act of breathing, of seeing, of looking on wonders
in which his hands had taken no part in the making,
would fill him with the indefinable pleasure which
had suddenly become his experience. He wondered,
as he still stood gazing into the infinity of that