“I tell you,” suggested Jack, “suppose we go out th’ back door there an’ sneak around th’ edge of th’ clearin’. Mebbe we kin come on Nolan when he ain’t lookin’—and what I’ll do to him’ll be a plenty!”
Allan laughed at his ferocity.
“I don’t believe Nolan would stay around here,” he said. “He didn’t know but what there were others with us. He probably decamped as soon as he took that crack at me.”
“Well, it won’t do any harm t’ try,” said Jack, and try they did, but no trace of Nolan was anywhere to be seen.
They went on through the woods, eating their lunch beside a limpid spring which bubbled from beneath a rock in the hillside, and during the afternoon pushed on along the valley, but met no human beings. If it was indeed Nolan who fired the shot, he had taken to cover effectually. Allan began to doubt more and more that it had really been Nolan.
“It might have been a hunter,” he pointed out to Jack, “who was shooting at something else, and did not see us at all. Such things happen, you know.”
“Yes,” Jack admitted, “but that wasn’t what happened this time,” and, when they reached home again, he went straight over to the offices and related to Mr. Schofield the details of the morning’s adventures. That official promised to put two detectives on Nolan’s trail at once. They worked on it for two or three days, but, though they even employed a bloodhound in the effort to run him down, all their work was quite in vain. The man to whom the cabin belonged said he had walked over to a neighbour’s that Sunday and had been away from home all day. He denied all knowledge of Nolan or Reddy Magraw, And the search ended, as all the others had done, without finding a trace of either of them.
So the days passed, and the work on section went on in its unvaried round. And even from day to day Allan felt himself changing, as his horizon broadened. He had become a different boy from the diffident youngster who had asked Jack Welsh for a job that morning a few short months before. Work had strengthened him and made him a man; he felt immeasurably older; he had gained self-confidence; he felt that he could look out for himself in any emergency. He was playing a man’s part in the world; he was earning an honest living. He had gained friends, and he began to feel that he had a future before him. He was going to make the most of every opportunity, for he was ambitious, as every boy ought to be. He longed to get into the superintendent’s office, where there would be a chance to learn something about the infinitely difficult work of operating the road, and where there would be a chance for promotion. He never spoke of this to Jack, for such a thought seemed almost like desertion, but he never passed the offices without looking longingly up at the network of wires and signals. Sometimes, when some duty took him up-stairs, he could hear the wild chatter of the instruments in the despatchers’ office, and he determined to try to understand their language.
Jack came into the section-shanty one morning with a sheet of paper in his hand and a broad smile upon his face.
“I’ve got a Christmas gift fer y’, boys,” he said, and stuck the notice up on the hook. They all crowded around to read it.