The light was fading when Prescott walked into sight of the construction camp. It was situated on the edge of a belt of a muskeg sprinkled with birches and small pines, where the new railroad, leaving the open country to the south, ran up toward the great coniferous forest that fringes the northern portion of the prairie. Prescott had sold his horse at a lonely farm and he was now tired and hungry, but he felt satisfied that he was on the right track and had succeeded in eluding the police. Curtis and Private Stanton were men of fixed ideas; believing Jernyngham to be dead, they had, no doubt, merely made a few perfunctory inquiries at the nearest railroad camps. Moreover, as they had reason for concluding that Prescott would seek refuge across the American boundary, they would concentrate their efforts on looking for him there. Accordingly, he felt safe from pursuit.

By and by he stopped to look about. To the eastward all was gray, a dim waste of grass dotted with shadowy trees; but a vivid band of green still glowed on the western horizon. In front lay a broad shallow basin, streaked with filmy trails of mist, between which came the wan gleam of little pools. A causeway stretched out into the morass, sprinkled with the indistinct figures of toiling men. At its inner end, where it left the higher ground, a row of cars stood on a side-track, and near-by 132 there were ranged straggling lines of tents and wooden shacks. Wisps of blue smoke drifted across the swamp, and a beam of strong white light streamed out from the electric head-lamp of a locomotive. The still air was filled with the clink of shovels, the clang of flung-down rails, and the sharp rattle of falling gravel.

Going on until he reached the camp, Prescott stopped beside a group of men sitting about a fire, and loosed the heavy pack that galled his shoulders.

“If you can give me a place to lie down and a bit of supper, boys, I’d be obliged,” he said.

Two or three of them turned and looked at him without much curiosity. They were strong, brown-faced fellows, dressed in old duck overalls and slate-colored shirts, with shapeless hats and dilapidated knee-boots.

“Why, certainly,” responded one in a clean English intonation. “However, as we’re paying for our board, we’ll have to invite you as the guest of the construction contractor; but there’s no reason you should be shy about accepting his hospitality. Sit down until Shan Li brings the grub along.”

“Here’s a place,” said another. “Want a job?”

“I don’t know yet,” Prescott answered. “I’m looking for a friend of mine: man of middle height, with pale-blue eyes and a curious twinkling smile. He was wearing a green shirt of finer stuff than they generally sell at the settlements when I last saw him, and I expect he’d have a fresh scar on his head.”

There was signs of interest and amusement which suggested that Prescott was on the right track.

“Did he call himself Kermode?” one of the men asked. 133

Prescott hesitated. It was possible that some of them had heard of the Jernyngham affair, and he had no wish that they should connect him with it. While he considered his answer, the man with the English accent broke in:

“We needn’t trouble about the point. One name’s as good as another, as our friend Kermode, who seems to have been a bit of philosopher, remarked when they put him on the pay-roll.”

“When I was back at Nelson a smart policeman rode into the camp,” said another of the group. “Wanted to know if we had seen the man you’re asking for; gave us quite a good description of him. Anyway, I hadn’t seen him then, and when I struck him afterward I didn’t send word to the police. I’ve no use for those fellows; they’re best left alone.”

“Then you know him?” Prescott exclaimed eagerly.

The man looked at his comrades and there was a laugh.

“Oh, yes,” said one of them; “we know him all right. Glad to meet a man who’s a friend of his; but if you expect a job here, you don’t want to mention it. If another fellow of that kind comes along, the boss will get after him with a gun.”

“Kermode,” the Englishman explained, “is a man of happy and original thoughts. I believe I might say he is unique.”

The conversation was interrupted by a steadily increasing rattle, and a great light that moved swiftly blazed on the camp. It faded as a ballast-train rolled out upon the bank which traversed the swamp, with a swarm of indistinct figures clinging to the low cars. When it stopped, the sides of the cars fell outward, a big plow moved forward from one to another, and broken rock 134 and gravel, pouring off, went crashing and rattling down the slope. The noise it made rang harshly through the stillness of the evening, and when it ceased a whistle screamed and the clangor of the wheels began again. As the engine backed the train away, the blaze of the head-lamp fell on an object lying half buried in the muskeg about sixty feet below the line, and one of the men, pointing to it, touched Prescott’s arm.

“See what that is?” he said.

Prescott saw that it was what the railroad builders call a steel dump: a metal wagon capable of carrying thirty or forty tons of ballast, with an automatic arrangement for throwing out its load.

“How did it get there?” he asked.

“Tell you after supper,” said the fellow. “They’re bringing it along.”

A whistle blew and Prescott followed his companions into a shed built of railroad ties and galvanized iron. It was lighted by kerosene lamps which diffused an unpleasant odor, and fitted with rude tables and benches; but the meal laid out in it was bountiful and varied: pork, hard steak, fish from the lakes, potatoes, desiccated fruits, and tea. The shovel-gang paid six dollars a week for their board and got good value. As usual, most of them were satisfied in fifteen minutes, for in the West the rank and file eat with determined haste, and when they trooped out Prescott went back with his new friends to the fire. Taking out his pipe, he made himself as comfortable as possible on a pile of gravel and, tired with a long day’s march, looked lazily about. The strong light still blazed along the bank where hurrying men passed through the stream of radiance, vanished into the shadows, and appeared again. There was a continuous rattling and 135 clinking and roar of falling stones; rails rang as they were moved, and now and then hoarse orders came out of the darkness.

After Prescott had asked a few leading questions, the men began to talk of Kermode, who had already left the camp, and the rancher was able to put together the story of his doings there.

The muskeg was an unusually bad one. It swallowed the rock the men dumped in; logs, brush, and branches afforded no foundation, and a long time elapsed before the engineers were satisfied about the base of the embankment. The weather remained unusually hot until late in the fall, and the contractor, already behind time and anxious to make progress before the frost interfered with his work, developed a virulent temper. His construction foreman drove the men mercilessly, spurring on the laggards with scathing words and occasionally using a heavy fist when they showed resentment. The laborers’ nerves were worn raw, their strength was exhausted; but the muskeg must be filled and, while carload after carload of rock and gravel was hurled down, the line crept on.

Things were in this state when Kermode reached the camp and, on applying for work, was given a shovel and made to use it in a strenuous fashion. It appeared that he was not expert with the tool and the foreman’s most pointed remarks were generally addressed to him, but he had a humorous manner which gained him friends. Once or twice, to his comrades’ admiration, he engaged his persecutor in a wordy contest and badly routed him, which did not improve matters. Indeed, his last victory proved a costly one, because afterward when there was anything particularly unpleasant or dangerous to be done, Kermode 136 was selected. As it happened, the risks that must be faced were numerous.

Kermode stood it for some weeks, though ............