“She come in with a busted cylinder,” he exclaimed, “and they had to go to Edmonton to get ’er fixed. But she’ll be back this morning sometime and you’ll have a nice ride to the Landing.” Then he laughed. “That is, if you can pull a heavy passenger coach over them tracks.”
It was eleven o’clock when the old-fashioned engine reappeared but any motive power seemed good enough and when the little Irish conductor read his orders, he cheerfully busied himself in making the passenger car and the three other cars a part of his train. The spirit of discontent disappeared and once again the northbound expedition was on its way.
Until twelve o’clock that night, the indefatigable little Irishman pushed his heavy train, which included many cars of long-delayed freight, over the new tracks, which alternately seemed to float and sink into the soft sand and muskeg. Four times in that journey some one car of the train slid off the track and just as often the energetic crew pulled it back again. Once the accident was more serious. When the piling-up jarring told that another pair of wheels were in the muskeg and the train came to a crashing stop, it was found that the front axles of the car had jammed themselves so far rearward that the car was out of service. But again there was little delay. With two jack screws, the little Irishman lifted the car sideways and toppled it over. Coupling up the other cars, the train proceeded.
At six o’clock in the evening supper was found in the cook car of a construction camp. It did not grow dark until eleven o’clock, and by this time, Colonel Howell and his friends were beginning to get a little sleep curled up on the seats of their car. An hour later, having creakingly crossed a long trestle, the strange train, still bumping and rattling, made its way along the even newer and worse track which led into Athabasca Landing.
There were neither depot nor light to make cheer for the tired travelers. With the help of Moosetooth and La Biche and a few half-breeds, the considerable baggage of the party was dumped out onto the sand of the new roadway and then, all joining in the task, it was carried across the street to the new Alberta Hotel. For the first time the boys discovered that there was almost a chill of frost in the air; in the office of the hotel a fire was burning in a big stove and from the front door Colonel Howell pointed through the starlight to a bank of mist beyond the railroad track.
“There she is, boys,” he remarked.
“You mean the river?” exclaimed Roy.
“Our river now,” answered their elder. “There’s plenty of room here and good beds. Turn in and don’t lose any time in the morning. We’ve got nothing ahead of us now but work. And remember, too, you’re not in the land of condensed milk yet; you’ll have the best breakfast to-morrow morning you’re going to have for many a day.”
Moosetooth and old La Biche had already disappeared toward the misty riverbank.
Dawn came early the next morning and with almost the first sign of it Norman and Roy were awake. From their window they had their first sight of the Athabasca. A light fog still lay over the river and the three-hundred-foot abrupt hills on the far side. Had they been able to make out the tops of these hills, they would have seen a few poplar trees. A steep brown road that started from the end of a ferry and mounted zigzag into the fog, was the beginning of a trail that at once passed into a desolate wilderness. They were within sight of the endless untraveled land that reached, unbroken by civilization, to the far-distant Arctic.