Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 18, 2025
Kermode had seen no sign of life and he was getting anxious when, as they approached a bluff, he pulled up the horse. "Listen!" he exclaimed. "I think I heard something!" There was silence for a moment or two, and then he caught a soft drumming and a rattle that might have been made by wheels. "Yes," he said. "It's a team and wagon."
He saw that Foster was a young man with a good-humored brown face. "I understand that I owe you more than I thought at first," he said. "Helen seems to have been pretty awkwardly situated when you appeared on the scene. Sit down and smoke while I get supper." They talked gaily during the meal. "Is there any means of sending back the horse I brought?" Kermode asked after a while.
"And I've three or four dollars. You see our difficulty needed a drastic remedy." "But you were at work on the railroad. I understand wages are high." "That's so; but it's some time since the pay car came along." "But you will get what is due you, when you go back?" "Have another sandwich," said Kermode. "You have made them very well."
"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.
The gravel was small and slippery, lying at a steep slope, and they rolled down, still grappling with each other, until there was a splash below. A few moments later Kermode painfully climbed the bank alone. "I guess you had better go down and pull your boss out," he said.
The next day Kermode was informed of this decision and took it good-humoredly. Before leaving the camp he spent an evening with Ferguson, who expressed keen regret at his departure. "I have an idea that I may have got you into trouble, and it hurts me," the minister said. Kermode laughed in a reassuring manner.
Then he recounted his adventures along the railroad under the name of Kermode, until Prescott interrupted him. "I followed you to the abandoned claim in the mountains, where I had to give it up. How did you make out after you struck south with the prospector crank?" "That was the most interesting part of the trip, but I could hardly describe it.
It would be very rash to claim all that one was entitled to; in other words, one's deserts. You're Mr. Kermode, I believe; you must know my name is Ferguson." Kermode bowed. "What are you going to do with this log?" he asked. "It's to be a door-post in the new church. I wonder if you would be willing to haul it in?" Kermode said that he would be glad to do so.
They could, he said, be pushed by hand, and nobody was surprised when Kermode was among the men chosen for the task. Though the nights were getting cold, the days were still very hot, and those engaged in it found the work of propelling a steel car carrying about thirty tons of stone over rails laid roughly on a slight upward grade remarkably arduous. This, however, did not content the foreman.
"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."
Word Of The Day
Others Looking