when prescott got up the next morning, dawn was breaking across the muskeg. there was frost in the air, the freight-cars on the side-track and the roofs of the shacks were white, and a nipping breeze swept through the camp. it was already filled with sounds of activity—hoarse voices, heavy footsteps, the tolling of a locomotive bell, and the rattle of wheels—and prescott’s new friends were eating in a neighboring shed. going in, he was supplied with breakfast, and when he left the table the englishman joined him.
“have you made up your mind whether you want a job or not?” he asked.
prescott said he thought he would push on, and the man looked at him deprecatingly.
“well,” he said, “we don’t want to appear inhospitable, but as things are run here, you’re the guest of the boss, and since he didn’t give the invitation, there might be trouble if he noticed you.”
“as it happens, i want to get hold of kermode as soon as i can,” prescott answered.
“you shouldn’t have much difficulty in finding him. it’s hardly possible for a man of his gifts to go through the country without leaving a plain trail behind.”
prescott agreed with this. he had not much doubt of kermode’s identity, and he thought his missing friend 142 would give any acquaintances he made on his travels cause to remember him.
“there’s a construction train starting west in about half an hour,” resumed the railroad hand. “if you get on board with the boys, it will look as if you belonged to the gang.”
daylight had come when prescott clambered up on one of the long flat cars loaded with rails and ties, and in a few minutes the train started. it followed what was called a cut-out line, which worked round the muskeg and back to the main track through a country too difficult for the latter to traverse; and for a while prescott’s interest was occupied by its progress. groups of men in brown overalls were seated on the rails, which clanged musically in rude harmony with the clatter of the wheels. a sooty cloud streamed back above them, now and then blotting out the clusters of figures; the cars swayed and shook, and in view of the roughness of the line prescott admired the nerve of the engineer.
the wind that whipped his face was cold and pierced the blanket he had flung over his shoulders; but the sunshine was growing brighter and the mist in the hollows was rapidly vanishing. as a rule, the depressions were swampy, and as they sped across them prescott could see the huge locomotive rocking, while the rails, which were spiked to ties thrown down on brush, sank beneath the weight and sprang up again as the cars jolted by. as they rushed down tortuous declivities, the cars banged and canted round the curves, while prescott held on tight, his feet braced against a rail. it was better when they joined the graded track, and toward noon he was given a meal with the others at a camp where a bridge was being strengthened. when they started 143 again, he lay down in his blanket where the sunshine fell upon him and the end of the car kept off the wind, and lighting his pipe became lost in reflection.
it was obvious that he must use every effort to find jernyngham and he thought he might succeed in this; but what then? to prove his innocence, in which she already believed, would not bridge the gulf between him and muriel hurst. it seemed impossible that she should be willing to marry a working rancher. yet he knew that he could not overcome his love for her; there was pleasure as well as pain in remembering her frankness and gaiety and confidence in him; and the charm of her beauty was strong. he recalled the crimson of her lips, the glow of warm color in her hair, the brightness of her smile, and the softness he had once or twice seen in her violet eyes. then he drove these thoughts away; to indulge in them would only make the self-denial he must practise the harder.
he next tried to occupy his mind with gertrude jernyngham, for he was still without a clue to her disconcerting change of mood. she had no great attraction for him, but he had pitied her and found a certain pleasure in her society. it was strange that after taking his view of her brother’s fate against the one her father held, she should suddenly turn upon him in bitter anger. he was hurt at this, particularly as he did not think the revelation that he had personated cyril accounted for everything. however, as it was unavoidable, he thought he could bear miss jernyngham’s suspicion.
he was disturbed in his reflections by a sudden jolt of the train as it stopped at a water-tank. getting down with the others, he saw a man standing in the entrance of a 144 half-finished wooden building. the fellow looked like a mechanic, and his short blue-serge jacket and other details of his dress suggested that he was an englishman. on speaking to him, prescott learned that the train would be detained a while, because a locomotive and some empty cars were coming down the line. the man further mentioned that a number of railroad hands had been engaged in putting up the building until lately, when they had been sent on somewhere else, and prescott inquired if there had been a man among them who answered to his friend’s description.
“there was,” said the other dryly, and called to somebody inside: “here’s a fellow asking for kermode!”
“bring him in!” replied a voice, and prescott entered the building.
it contained a pump and two large steel tanks. near one of them a man was doing something with a drill, but he took out his pipe and pointed to a piece of sacking laid on a beam.
“sit down and have a smoke,” he said. “you have plenty of time. was kermode a friend of yours?”
prescott looked about the place. he saw that it was a filtering station for the treatment of water unfit for locomotive use.
“thanks,” he responded. “i knew kermode pretty well; but i needn’t stop you.”
“oh, don’t mind that!” grinned the other. “we’re not paid by the piece on this job. besides, they’ve some chisels for us on your train and we haven’t got them yet.”
“you’re english, aren’t you?” prescott asked. “are you stopping out here?”
“not much!” exclaimed the other with scorn. “what 145 d’you take me for? there’s more in life than whacking rivets and holding the caulker. when a man has finished his work in this wilderness, what has he to do? there’s no music halls, no nothing; only the dismal prairie that makes your eyes sore to look at.”
prescott had heard other englishmen express themselves in a similar fashion, and he laughed.
“if that’s what you think of the country, why did you come here?”
“big wages,” replied the first man, entering the building. “funny, isn’t it, that when you want good work done you have to send for us? every machine-shop in your country’s full of labor-saving and ingenious tools, but when you build bridges with them they fall down, and i’ve seen tanks that wouldn’t hold water.”
“oh, well,” said prescott, divided between amusement and impatience, “this isn’t to the point. i understand kermode was here with you?”
“he was. came in on a construction train, looking for a job, and when we saw he was from the old country we put him on.”
“you put him on? don’t these things rest with the division boss?”
the man grinned.
“you don’t understand. we’re specialists and get what we ask for. sent the boss word we wanted an assistant, and, as we’d picked one up, all he had to do was to put him on the pay-roll.”
“and did kermode get through his work satisfactorily?”
“for a while. he was a handy man; might have made a boiler-maker if he’d took to it young. when we had nothing else to keep him busy, he’d cut tobacco for us and set us laughing with his funny talk.” 146
this was much in keeping with jernyngham’s character. but the man went on:
“when we’d made him a pretty good hand with the file and drill, he got bill to teach him how to caulk. he shaped first-rate, so one day we thought we’d leave him to it while we went off for a jaunt. bill had bought an old shot-gun from a farmer, and we’d seen a lot of wild hens about.”
“it would be close time—you can only shoot them in october; but i suppose that wouldn’t count.”
“not a bit,” said the boiler-maker. “all we were afraid of was that a train might come in with the boss on board; but we chanced it. we told kermode he might go round the tank-plate landings—the laps, you know—with the caulker, and give them a rough tuck in, ready for us to finish; and then we went off. well, we didn’t shoot any wild hens, though bill got some pellets in his leg, and when we came back we both felt pretty bad when we saw what kermode had done. bill couldn’t think of names enough to call him, and he’s good at it.”
“what had he done?”
“hammered the inside of the landings down with a gullet you could put your finger in. too much energy’s your mate’s complaint. nobody could tell what that man would do when he gets steam up. understand, we’re boiler-making specialists, sent out on awkward jobs; and he’d put in work that would disgrace a farmer! for all that, it was bill’s fault for speaking his mind too free—he got thrown behind the tank.”
“i wasn’t,” contradicted the other. “he jumped at me unexpected when the spanner hit him, and i fell.”
prescott laughed. remembering how jernyngham had driven a truculent rabble out of sebastian, he could 147 imagine the scene in the shed; but it was evident that the boiler-makers bore him no malice.
“after all,” said the first one, “when we cooled off and got talking quiet, he said he’d better go, and we parted friendly.”
“do you know where he went?”
“i don’t; we didn’t care. we’d had enough of him. first thing was to put that caulking right, and we spent three or four days driving the landings down—you can do a lot with good soft steel. anyhow, when we filled up the time-sheet showing how far we’d got on with the job, there was a nasty letter from the engineer. wanted to know what we’d been playing at and said he’d have us sent home if we couldn’t do better.”
while prescott thanked them for the information a bell began to toll and there was a rattle of wheels. hurrying out, he saw a locomotive approaching the tank and men clambering on to the cars in which he had traveled. soon after he joined them, the train rolled out of the side-track and sped west, clattering and jolting toward the lurid sunset that burned upon the edge of the plain. jack-pines and scattered birches stood out hard and black against the glare, the rails blazed with crimson fire and faded as the ruddy light changed to cold green, and there was a sting of frost in the breeze.
they dropped a few men at places where work was going on, stopped for water, and crawled at slow speed over half-finished bridges and lengths of roughly graded line. after nightfall it grew bitterly cold and prescott, lying on the boards with his blanket over him, shivered, half asleep. for the most part, darkness shut them in, but every now and then lights blazed beside the line and voices hailed the engineer as the pace decreased. then, 148 while the whistle shrieked, ballast cars on a side-track and tall iron frameworks slipped by, and they ran out again into the silent waste. prescott was conscious of a continuous jolting which shook him to and fro; he thought he heard a confused altercation among his companions at the end of the car, and the clang of wheels and the shaking rails rang in measured cadence in his ears. then the sounds died away and he fell into a heavy sleep.
it was noon the next day when he alighted, aching all over, where the line ran into a deep hollow between fir-clad hills. a stream came flashing through the gorge and at the mouth of it shacks and tents and small frame houses straggled up a rise, with a wooden church behind them. farther up, the hollow was filled with somber conifers, and the hills above it ran back, ridge beyond ridge, into the distance. then, looking very high and far away, a vast chain of snowy summits was etched against a sky of softest blue. those that caught the light gleamed with silvery brightness, but part of the great range lay in shadow, steeped in varying hues of ethereal gray. from north to south, as far as the eye could follow, the serrated line of crag and peak swept on majestically.
tired as he was, prescott felt the impressiveness of the spectacle; but he had other things to think about, and slipping away from the railroad hands, he turned toward a rude frame hotel which stood among the firs beside the river. rows of tall stumps spread about it, farther back lay rows of logs, diffusing a sweet resinous fragrance. through a gap between the towering trunks one looked up the wild, forest-shrouded gorge, and the litter of old provision cans, general refuse, and discarded 149 boots could not spoil the beauty of the scene. prescott asked for a room; and sitting outside after dinner, he gathered from some men, who were not working, the story of kermode’s next exploit. their accounts of it were terse and somewhat disconnected, but prescott was afterward able to amplify them from the narrative of a more cultured person.
kermode had been unloading rails all day, and he was standing on the veranda one evening when a supply train from the east was due. it appeared that he had renewed his wardrobe at the local store and invariably changed his clothes when his work was finished. this was looked upon as a very unusual thing, and his companions thought it even more curious that he had not been known to enter the bar of the hotel; its proprietor was emphatic on the point. a number of railroad hands lounged about, attired as usual in their working clothes.
at length the tolling of a bell broke through the silence of the woods and the train ran in. the rutted street became crowded with unkempt, thirsty men, and in a few minutes the hotel was filled with their harsh voices. last of all appeared a girl, with a very untidy man carrying a bag beside her. she walked with a limp, and looked jaded and rather frightened. her light cloak was thick with dust and locomotive cinders which clung to the woolly material; her face was hot and anxious, but attractive.
“thank you,” she said to her companion, opening her purse when they reached the veranda.
“shucks! you can put that back,” returned the man with an awkward gesture and then, lifting the bag, carefully replaced the end of a garment that projected 150 through the bottom. “i’ll carry the grip in for you, but you want to be careful with the thing. seems to have got busted when the rails fell on it.”
the girl passed through a wire-net door that he opened, and kermode, following, waited for several minutes after her companion had rung a bell. then a man in a white shirt and smart clothes appeared.
“can i send a telegram from here to drummond?” she asked him.
“no; the wires won’t run into that district until next year.”
“how can i get there?”
“i guess you’ll have to hire a team at the livery-stable; take you about three days to get through.”
the girl looked dismayed.
“then can you give me a room to-night?” she asked.
“sorry,” said the man, “we’re full up with the railroad boys; the waitresses have to camp in the kitchen. don’t know if anybody can take you in; the track bosses have got all the rooms in town.”
he disappeared and the girl sat down, looking very forlorn and disconsolate. her voice was english and she had obviously traveled a long distance in an open car on the supply train. kermode felt sorry for her. he took off his hat as he approached.
“if you don’t mind waiting a few minutes, i’ll see if i can find you quarters,” he said.
she glanced at him suspiciously, with a heightened color, which he thought a favorable sign, but her eyes grew more confident and when she agreed he withdrew. as a man of experience who had been a favorite with women, he was, however, guilty of an error of judgment during his search. a smart young woman with whom he 151 was on friendly terms managed a cigar store, and it is possible that she would have taken some trouble to oblige him; but his request that she should offer shelter to another girl whose acquaintance he seemed to have made in a most casual manner was received with marked coldness. kermode, indeed, felt sorry he had suggested it when he left the store and set out for a shack belonging to the widow of a man killed on the line. she was elderly and grim, a strict methodist from the east, who earned a pittance by mending the workmen’s clothes. after catechizing kermode severely, she gave a very qualified assent; and returning to the hotel, he found the girl anxiously waiting for him. she looked relieved when he reported his success.
“i had better go at once,” she said. “you think mrs. jasper will take me in?”
kermode picked up the bag.
“to tell the truth, she only promised to have a look at you.” then he smiled reassuringly. “i’ve no doubt there’ll be no difficulty when she has done so.”
the girl followed him and, as they went slowly up the street, while all the loungers watched them, she gave kermode a confused explanation. her name was helen foster, and she had come from england to join a brother who had taken up a farm near drummond, which prescott had heard was a remote settlement. her brother had told her to notify him on her arrival at winnipeg and await instructions, but on board the steamer she had met the wife of a railroad man engaged on the new line who had offered her company to a point in the west from which helen could reach her destination. on arriving at the railroad man’s station, he had sent her on by the supply train. 152
a little distance up the street, kermode stopped outside a shed in which a fellow of unprepossessing appearance was rubbing down a horse. his character, as kermode knew, was no better than his looks.
“i must see the liveryman,” he told the girl, and when he had sent the hostler for him the proprietor came out.
“the round-trip to drummond will take six days, and you’d want a team,” he said. “i’d have to charge you thirty dollars.”
kermode looked dubious, his companion dismayed. she had three dollars and a few cents.
“can you drive this lady there?” kermode asked.
“i can’t. jim would have to go.”
“i think not,” said kermode firmly. “i’ll see you about a saddle-horse in the morning.” he turned to the girl: “we’ll go along again.”
a few minutes later they reached the widow’s shack and kermode waited some time after his companion was admitted. as she did not come out, he concluded that mrs. jasper was satisfied and returned to the hotel, where he was freely bantered by the loungers.
“that will do, boys,” he said at length. “if there’s any more of this kind of talk, the man who keeps it up will get badly hurt.”
they saw that he meant it and, as he was popular, they left him in peace.
