He had been riding the line all week because it was October and October was the only month that paid and he came forward already irritated because a conductor had sent word back that a passenger was making difficulty. He heard Philillip's account standing in the vestibule with the cold coming in. He did not hear Jane's. He never asked for it. He looked at the coat, the same as everybody else had looked at the coat, and he told her the road reserved the right to assign accommodation as operations required, and he offered her a pass good for the morning train.
"Write the reason down," Jane said. Dwight blinked at her. "The reason," she said again, "you are moving a paying passenger out of a numbered seat. Write down why, and sign it, and give me a copy." Dwight Hopkins had worked for railroads 19 years and no passenger had ever asked him that in his life. He told her she was being unreasonable.
He told her he could have her put off by the sheriff at Elm Creek if she went on obstructing the crew. And then he said the sentence he would think about for the rest of his life, though he did not know it yet. And he said it in a bored voice while looking out the window at the stock pens. This is a railroad, Mrs. It is not a hotel and it is not a court.
Take the pass or take the platform. Jane took the platform. She stepped down at Elm Creek with her daughter, a carpet bag and a bunch of crushed aers. The train stayed where it was. It still had three cars of steers to load and the water column was still running.
And that is the only reason any of the rest of this happened. The Elm Creek platform was 40 ft of plank with a water tank at one end and a stock chute at the other. And in October, it smelled of cattle and creassote and wet coal smoke. Jane set the carpet bag down and straightened the newspaper around the aers which had been crushed flat on one side. Rose had not said a word since the aisle.
She stood with her back against the depot wall and watched the parlor car windows and behind one of them Pauline Fields was being brought coffee. Then Rose said it. Why didn't you tell them who you are? There was no pride in the way she asked it. It was not a child asking her mother to go back in and win.
It was a girl working out why a woman she had never once seen frightened had let strangers do that to her in front of everybody. The girl was certain, the way children are certain, that her mother could have stopped it with one sentence. Jane crouched down so their faces were level. She was quiet for a moment. What she was deciding was how much of it a 10-year-old could carry.
Because if they are decent to us only after they find out what I am, she said, then they were never being decent to us at all. They were being careful. Those are two different things, and only one of them is worth having. Rose thought about that. But they made everybody in the car think we were lying.