“It’s only half past eight,” Scott said, “and we ought to make the camp tonight if it is there. There’s a good moon. Wasn’t that girl a fright?”
“That’s the way most of them look around here. They nearly all have trachoma. I have seen some pretty ones, but mighty few. Let’s hit it up a little. We don’t want to get to that camp too late, or we can’t get in.”
The pace became too hot to permit of further conversation, and Scott amused himself revising his Indian ideas and speculating on what the Celebration would be like. The spectacle at the cabin had changed his expectations. The long June twilight made the road plain before them till ten o’clock and by that time the moon was high in the heavens. By eleven o’clock they were beginning to think that the sight of that half dollar had led the “beautiful Indian maiden” to invent a lumber camp for the occasion, when they heard the snort of a locomotive at no great distance ahead of them.
“There, by George!” Scott exclaimed. “She was honest, if she was homelier than sin.”
“The next question,” Merton said, “is that locomotive going or coming?”
The sound had ceased, and they hurried forward to investigate. They found that it was only the “swipe” cleaning out the engine. They could see his figure flitting here and there around the engine in the dim light of a lantern. He heard them coming and stopped to see who it was—the camp had been asleep for two hours. When he saw their packs he took them for lumberjacks looking for a job.
“Nothing doing here,” he growled, without further greeting. “The camp’s full up, and the boss has a waiting list.”
“He’s lucky,” Merton commented. “We’re not looking for jobs. We’re trying to get to White Earth. Will there be any train out in that direction in the morning?”
“Five o’clock,” the man growled, “if I can get this old teakettle cleaned out by that time. Where did you come from?” In the daytime he would probably have ignored their existence, but the loneliness of the night and his curiosity made him sociable.
“Itasca Park,” Merton answered. “How near will the train take us to White Earth?”