"Drowned?"

"No, he was not. He crawled out away down by the bridge, though a man

couldn't have done it once in a thousand times. It was old Bill

Dancing--he's got more lives than a cat. Do you remember where we

first pulled up the train in the afternoon? A string of ten box cars

stood there last night and when the wind shifted it blew the whole

bunch off the track."

"Oh, do let us get away from here," urged Gertrude. "I feel as if

something worse would happen if we stayed. I'm sorry we ever left

McCloud yesterday."

The men came from their compartments and there was more talk of the

storm. Clem and his helpers were starting breakfast in the dining-car

and the doctor and Harrison wanted to walk down to see where the river

had cut into the dike. Mrs. Whitney had not appeared and they asked

the young ladies to go with them. Gertrude objected. A foggy haze

hung over the valley.

"Come along," urged Harrison; "the air will give you an appetite."

After some remonstrating she put on her heavy coat, and carrying

umbrellas the four started under the conductor's guidance across to the

dike. They picked their steps along curving tracks, between material

piles and through the débris of the night. On the dike they spent some

time looking at the gaps and listening to explanations of how the river

worked to undermine and how it had been checked. Watchers hooded in

yellow stickers patrolled the narrow jetties or, motionless, studied

the eddies boiling at their feet.

Returning, the party walked around the edge of the camp where cooks

were busy about steaming kettles. Under long, open tents wearied men

lying on scattered hay slept after the hardship of the night. In the

drizzling haze half a dozen men, assistants to the engineer--rough

looking but strong-featured and quick-eyed--sat with buckets of

steaming coffee about a huge campfire. Four men bearing a litter came

down the path. Doctor Lanning halted them. A laborer had been pinched

during the night between loads of piling projecting over the ends of

flat cars and they told the doctor his chest was hurt. A soiled

neckcloth covered his face but his stertorous breathing could be heard,

and Gertrude Brock begged the doctor to go to the camp with the injured

man and see whether something could not be done to relieve him until

the company surgeon arrived. The doctor, with O'Brien, turned back.

Gertrude, depressed by the incident, followed Louise and Allen Harrison

along the path which wound round a clump of willows flanking the

campfire.

On the sloping bank below the trees and a little out of the wind a man

on a mattress of willows lay stretched asleep. He was clad in leather,

mud-stained and wrinkled, and the big brown boots that cased his feet

were strapped tightly above his knees. An arm, outstretched, supported

his head, hidden under a soft gray hat. Like the thick gloves that

covered his clasped hands, his hat and the handkerchief knotted about

his neck were soaked by the rain, falling quietly and trickling down

the furrows of his leather coat. But his attitude was one of

exhaustion, and trifles of discomfort were lost in his deep respiration.




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