ON THE TRAIL
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 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 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 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 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."
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 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, 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 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 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 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.
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.