The three days' voyage by boat and rail was irksome. I bought my kit
at Sainte Croix, on the Central Pacific Railroad, and on June 1st I
began the last stage of my journey _via_ the Sainte Isole broad-gauge,
arriving in the wilderness by daylight. A tedious forced march by
blazed trail, freshly spotted on the wrong side, of course, brought me
to the northern terminus of the rusty, narrow-gauge lumber railway
which runs from the heart of the hushed pine wilderness to the sea.
Already a long train of battered flat-cars, piled with sluice-props
and roughly hewn sleepers, was moving slowly off into the brooding
forest gloom, when I came in sight of the track; but I developed a
gratifying and unexpected burst of speed, shouting all the while. The
train stopped; I swung myself aboard the last car, where a pleasant
young fellow was sitting on the rear brake, chewing spruce and reading
a letter.
"Come aboard, sir," he said, looking up with a smile; "I guess you're
the man in a hurry."
"I'm looking for a man named Halyard," I said, dropping rifle and
knapsack on the fresh-cut, fragrant pile of pine. "Are you Halyard?"
"No, I'm Francis Lee, bossing the mica pit at Port-of-Waves," he
replied, "but this letter is from Halyard, asking me to look out for a
man in a hurry from Bronx Park, New York."
"I'm that man," said I, filling my pipe and offering him a share of
the weed of peace, and we sat side by side smoking very amiably, until
a signal from the locomotive sent him forward and I was left alone,
lounging at ease, head pillowed on both arms, watching the blue sky
flying through the branches overhead.
Long before we came in sight of the ocean I smelled it; the fresh,
salt aroma stole into my senses, drowsy with the heated odor of pine
and hemlock, and I sat up, peering ahead into the dusky sea of pines.
Fresher and fresher came the wind from the sea, in puffs, in mild,
sweet breezes, in steady, freshening currents, blowing the feathery
crowns of the pines, setting the balsam's blue tufts rocking.
Lee wandered back over the long line of flats, balancing himself
nonchalantly as the cars swung around a sharp curve, where water
dripped from a newly propped sluice that suddenly emerged from the
depths of the forest to run parallel to the railroad track.
"Built it this spring," he said, surveying his handiwork, which seemed
to undulate as the cars swept past. "It runs to the cove--or ought
to--" He stopped abruptly with a thoughtful glance at me.
"So you're going over to Halyard's?" he continued, as though answering
a question asked by himself.