Passepartout became more impatient in proportion as he approached the end of his journey. Fix in his turn would have been very glad to get out of this rough country. He feared delays, he dreaded accidents, and was more in a hurry than Phileas Fogg himself to set foot upon English soil!
At ten o'clock at night the train stopped at Fort Bridger station, which it left almost immediately, and twenty miles further on it entered Wyoming Territory—following the entire valley of the Bitter Creek, whence flow a portion of the streams forming the water system of Colorado.
The next day, the 7th of December, there was a stop of a quarter hour at Green River station. The snow had fallen quite heavily through the night, but mingled with rain and half melted it could not interfere with the progress of the train. But this bad weather kept Passepartout in constant uneasiness, for the accumulation of the snow clogging the car wheels would certainly endanger the journey.
"What an idea," he said to himself, "for my master to travel during the winter! Could he not wait for the fine season of the year to increase his chances?"
But at this moment, while the good fellow was busy only with the condition of the sky and the lowering of the temperature, Aouda was experiencing more serious fears, which proceeded from quite another cause.
Some of the passengers had got out of the cars, and were walking on the platform of the Green River Station, waiting for the train to leave. The young woman, looking through the window pane, recognized among them Colonel Stamp Proctor, the American who had behaved so rudely to Phileas Fogg at the time of the political meeting in San Francisco. Aouda, not wishing to be seen, drew back from the window.
This circumstance made a lively impression upon the young woman. She was attached to the man who, however coldly, gave her every day tokens of the most absolute devotion. She doubtless did not comprehend the entire depth of the sentiment which her deliverer inspired in her, and to this sentiment she gave as yet only the name of gratitude; but unknown to herself, it was more than that. Her heart was therefore wrung at the sight of the rough fellow of whom Mr. Fogg would, sooner or later, demand
