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"My experience with the country," said Sours, "is that the wind always holds and don't do much else. It wouldn't surprise me if it carried him clean through to Chicago." I went back to the barn and sat down in the office. To tell the truth, I felt easier that Pike was gone. I well knew that he had no love for me. I sat a long time thinking over what had happened since I had come to Track's End.
The track's surveyed and blazed; they're working at it in sections, but there are big gaps where nothing has been done yet, and they have been withdrawing a large number of men. Crossing the mountains is a tough proposition in the winter." "Kermode didn't seem afraid of it." "He started two weeks ago, when there had been less snow. You'll find it difficult to get through the passes now."
Such a woman can't be worth having, and after that I wouldn't take her as a gracious gift were she to be made twice as beautiful. The track's before you, William Hinkley. Bring the stranger to the hug, and Margaret Cooper too, if she'll let you. But, at all events, get over the grunting and the growling, the sulky looks, and the sour moods.
I felt that I was out of the prison of Track's End at last; and so many times I had thought I never should get out alive! "And why didn't you die a thousand times from loneliness," cried Mr. Clerkinwell, after he had talked a few minutes, "if from no other cause?" "Oh," I answered, "I had some company, you know; then there were callers, too, once in a while."
Desmond kept his post by Lenox's head and shoulders, sheltering him still with the discarded coat, and clinging to the track's edge with supple, stockinged feet. But there was no preventing jars and jolts arising from broken ground, and the difficulty of carrying a litter at an almost impossible angle.
Another foolish notion seized me, and I took up the pen and as well as I could with my stiff fingers headed a page "December 17th," and below registered myself, "Judson Pitcher, Track's End, Dakota Territory." I think the excitement must have turned my brain, because I seemed to be doing silly things all the time.
I remembered that Tom had told me that the line had gone down beyond Siding No. 15, which was the first one east from Track's End. Everything made me think of Tom, and I looked away along the line of telegraph-poles where I knew the track was, down under the snow; but I could see no train coming to take me out of the horrible place. I soon had another fire going.
They had tried to ride on top of the cars of his train without paying fare, and he had thrown them all off, one by one, while the train was going. The fireman told me about it. Burrdock was taking me out to Track's End because he said it was a live town, and a good place for a boy to grow up in. He had first wanted me to join him in braking on the railroad, but I judged the work too hard for me.
"Is there trouble on the line?" she asked in a voice of peculiar clarity. "Bad trouble, Miss Camilla," answered Banneker. He pushed forward a chair, but she shook her head. "A loosened rock smashed into Number Three in the Cut. Eight dead, and a lot more in bad shape. They've got doctors and nurses from Stanwood. But the track's out below.
I was named Judson, which had been my mother's name before she was married, so I was called Jud Pitcher; and when I was ten years old I knew every horse for a dozen miles around, and most of the dogs. It was September 16th, in the late eighteen-seventies, that I first clapped eyes on Track's End, in the Territory of Dakota. The name of the place has since been changed.
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