United States or Pitcairn Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Within twelve months you'll see a new wagon-road cut south towards the big river, and inside two years the surveyors running the line for a new railroad into the Somasco valley." The men stared at the speaker, and there was a murmur, almost of doubt, and wonder.
Whenever were we going to get started at this rate? At last the mules came cantering up the wagon-road. 'Get a move on, I shouted to Vine as he pulled up before the door. But just at that moment Mrs. Kent began on 'The Reign of the Roses. Vine, who had kicked a foot out of its stirrup, did not dismount. He sat drinking in the dance-measure.
Wherever one saw a pile of gravel or a pile of broken stone, it was always heaped as trimly and exactly as a new grave or a stack of cannon-balls; nothing about those stations or along the railroad or the wagon-road was allowed to look shabby or be unornamental.
"Just a moment," suggested McCloud mildly, as Sinclair hastened past the goods piled in the wagon-road. "Whose team is that, Sinclair?" The road followed the right of way where they stood, and a four-horse team of heavy mules was pulling a loaded ranch-wagon up the grade when McCloud spoke. Sinclair answered cordially. "That's my team from over on the Frenchman. I picked them up at Denver.
A pressing weight seemed to slide off his shoulders and neck as Fancy swung smartly around the bend into the narrow wagon-road that stretched its aimless way through the scrubby bottom-lands and over the ridge to the open sweep of the plains beyond. Presently he urged the mare to a rhythmic lope, and all the while his ears were alert for the thud of galloping horses behind.
In the valleys and on much-traveled roads there is a good deal of dust, but it is, as they say, "clean dirt," and there is water enough in the country to wash it off. You need not ride on horseback unless you penetrate into Humboldt County, which has as yet but few miles of wagon-road.
There was no wagon-road up the gulch and it would have been difficult to get the buckboard in as far as the fork over the broken terrain. As a voyageur of the North he had often seen wounded men carried by the Indians in travois across the plains. He knew, too, that the tribes of the Southwest use them.
It was a railroad, single-tracked, with dirt ballast! Without a word, Ted and I shook hands! We were in Holland! Immediately we set out to find a road. There would be no more skulking through fields for us. We were free again, entitled to all the privileges of road and bridge. We soon found a good wagon-road leading to a bridge over the canal.
The latter point is only eight miles from Chattanooga and connected with it by a good wagon-road, which runs through a low pass in the Raccoon Mountains on the south side of the river to Brown's Ferry, thence on the north side to the river opposite Chattanooga. There were several steamers at Bridgeport, and abundance of forage, clothing and provisions.
There was some delay among the officers over the change of a horse, which had shown lameness, while the ringsters were all seated and waiting in their vehicles. Since none of us knew the trail to Alkali Lake, some one suggested that we follow up the quartermaster and allow the military and conveyances to go by the wagon-road.
Word Of The Day