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It ran down a bare hill, crossed a little ravine full of young white-stemmed birches, and up another bare hill to an equally bare crest where a farmhouse was perched a farmhouse painted a stark, staring yellow and the ugliest thing in farmhouses that John Lincoln had ever seen, even among the log shacks of the west.
He set to work among the negro cabins, the upper gallery seats of Paraiso's amphitheater of hills, for Renson had been a free agent for more than a month now and was not exactly in a condition to interview American housewives. My own task began down at the row of inhabited box-cars, and so on through shacks and tenements with many Spanish laborers' wives.
With guides who knew the waters, they ran the rapids below Fort George safely, and moored at Quesnel, the entrance to Cariboo, on the 11th of September four months after they had left Canada. Quesnel was at this time a rude settlement of perhaps a dozen log shacks chiefly bunkhouses and provision-stores.
What went on outside the limits of the camp's snow-drifted horizon its dwellers knew not nor for the moment cared. Work was the only thought. With hastily constructed snow-plows roads had been broken among the tents and shacks as soon as the weather allowed, and afterward broad paths made to the working ground. The section of undug canal was now scraped bare.
It is a picturesque little village; half the houses are mere shacks, a kind of compromise between dwelling and bath-houses, everyone being much too thrifty to pay money to the Casino when they can drip freely on their own sitting-room floor, without the least damage to the furnishings.
The little dog had seemed to be dying, but he too experienced a sort of resuscitation, and while he followed at first but feebly, it was not long before he was at heel again, although Hoxer was swift of foot, making all the speed he might toward his temporary home, the shacks that had been occupied by the construction gang.
As for Keith, he found himself suddenly the object of universal attention, and he might, had he been able to distribute himself, have slept in half the shacks in the camp. The only remark Dave made on the event was characteristic: "Don't let him git the drop on you again." The next morning Keith found himself, in some sort, famous.
Small boats were coming from the ships, loaded with people, while on the shore and some distance from the water throngs of men, women, and children were either huddled in groups, or hurrying to and fro in the most excited manner. Tents and rude brush shacks dotted the hillside, before which people were standing, while bundles and household effects were scattered about on every side.
There had been great "camps" in the building of other railroads, but never a city in the wilderness like this a place that had sprung up like magic and which, a few months later, was doomed to disappear as quickly. For half a mile it blazed out ahead of them, two garishly lighted rows of shacks, big tents, log buildings, and rough board structures, with a rough, wide street between.
Damon stumbled and fell, but Koku picked him up and, tucking him under one arm, as he might have done a child, the giant followed Tom to a place of safety. "Well, Tom, it went off all right," said Mr. Job Titus, as they stood among the shacks of the workmen and watched the smoke pouring out of the tunnel mouth. "Yes, it went off. But did it do the work? That's what we've got to find out."
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