The spectator., 1921-04-05
CHAPT FER l
At Sand Creek Sidino

AS general proposition, l don't De- lieve much in the things called "hunchcS." But there are exceptions to all rules, and we certainly uncov- cred the biggest one of the lot-the boss and I-the night We left Port land and the good old Pacific coast.
 It was this way. We had finished the construction work on the oregon Midland: and were on our way to the train, when I had one of those queer little premonitory chills you hear so much about and knew just as well as could he that we were never going to pull through to Chicago without get tirc jolt of some sort. The reason If youll call IL n reason-was that, just before we came to the railroad station the boss walked calmly under ladder standing in front of new building: and besides that. if was the thirteenth day of the month, Il Fri day. and raining like the very mis- chief.
 Just to sort of toll us along, may be the fates didn't begin on Us that night They waited until the next day. and then proceeded to shove us in behind Il freight-train wreck at Wtdner. Idaho. where we lost twelve hours. Ii looked as if that didn't amount to much. because we weren't due anywhere at any particular time The boss was on his way home for a little visit with his folks in Illinois, and beyond that he was going to meet bunch of Entlishmen in Montreal and maybe let them make him general manager of one of the Canadian rail roads.
 So Mir NorCroSS was in no special hurry, and neither was L l had been confidential clerk and shorthand an for the boss on the Midland construc- ton. and he was taking me along part ly because he knows q cracking good stenocrapher when he sees one, but mostly because I was dead anxious to go anywhere he was going
 But. if it hadn't been for that twelve hour layout we would have caught the Saturday night train on the Pioneer Short Line, instead of the train Sunday morning, and there would have been no meeting with Mrs. Sheila and Maisie Ann no tele- gram from Mir Chadwick. because it wouldn't have found us; no hold-up at Sand Creek siding; in short. nothing would have happened that did hap pen.
 II was on Sunday that the jolt be gan to get ready to land on us. Right soon after breakfast. with the help of a little Pullman berth table and me and my typewriter Mir. Norcross turned our section into a business office. saying that now we had good quiet day. wed clean up the million or so odds and ends of correspondence he'd been letting go while we were tussling for the Midland right-ofway through the Oregon mountains.
 From where he sat dictating 10 me the boss was facing forward and now and then an absent sort of look came into his eyes while he was talking off his letters and it puzzled me because ii wasn't like him. One of the times
 
 letters and had gone off to snfbke while typed few thousand lines from my notes to catch up, l8made discovery. There were two people in Section Five just ahead of us, n young woman and girl of maybe fif- teen or so. and the Pullman was the old-fashioned kind, with low seat backs. l put 1t up that in those ab- senteye intervals Mir. Norcross had been studying the back of the young woman's neck. was measurahly sure it wasn't the little girls.
 Along in the forenoon l made an ex- cuse to go and get n drink of water out of the forward cooler, and on the way back I took n good square look at our neighbors in Number Five. The young woman was pretty enough to start stopped clock-only pretty" isn't just the word. either; there wasn't any word, when you come right down to 1t. And the little girl was simply peach--a nice, downy, rosy peach; chunky, round-faced, sunny haired. jolly; with neat little turned up nose and big sort of boyish laugh ing eyes that fairly dared the world.
 At the second call to dinner Mir. Norcross told me to strap up the ma chine and put the files away in the grips and wed go eat. He was pretty