An Indian woman sitting on the stone steps of the railway station made him realize how near the edge of civilization, in very truth, he had come. There was, he remembered, a Reservation for Indians on the northern border of the State. It could not be very far from High Ridge.
With her bright shawl about her shoulders and her beadwork and baskets spread about her, the woman made a picturesque spot in the sunshine. At another time Burton would have stopped to examine her wares, for among his other dilettante pursuits was an interest in Indian basketry; but in his present impatient mood he would have pushed past with a mere glance but for one of those queer little incidents that we call accidental. A man who was coming down the steps that Burton was about to ascend passed near the black-eyed squaw, and she looked up with smiling recognition and laid her hand arrestingly upon his coat. But he was not in a responsive mood. He gave her a black look and struck her hand away with such impatience and violence that a pile of her upset baskets rolled down the steps and over the platform at Burton's feet. At once he stepped in front of the man, who was hurrying heedlessly on.
"Pick them up. You knocked them over," he said quietly.
The man gathered up one or two with instinctive obedience to a positive order, before he realized what he was doing. Then he straightened up and glared wrathfully at his self-appointed overseer.
"What the devil have you got to say about it?" he asked.
"You mind your own infernal business," the man cried, and flinging the baskets in his hand at Burton's feet he rushed on.
Burton beckoned a porter, who gathered up and restored the woman's scattered merchandise. For himself, he walked on toward the booth marked "Bureau of Information," and wondered what had possessed him to make him act so out of character. Why hadn't he called the porter in the first instance, if he felt it his affair? Something in the man's brutality had aroused a corresponding passion in himself. It was a case of hate at first sight, and he rejoiced that at any rate he had declared himself, and had put the uncivilized pale face into a humiliating rage!
The particular information of which he stood in immediate need was Leslie Underwood's address. He opened the city directory and turned to the U's. There were a dozen Underwoods,--a baker, a banker, a coal heaver, a doctor, a merchant,--where did Miss Leslie belong?