"We're not scheduled to stop," he commented.
"No, sir," replied the conductor. "Guess the company had once a notion of making a station here, but they cut it out. It's used as a section-depot and side-track, and now and then a freight pulls up for water. There's a soft spring here, and you can't get good water right along the line. Any kind won't do in a locomotive boiler."
The man was unusually loquacious for a western railroad hand, and Nevis, who had been glancing out at the shadowy sweep of prairie, amid which the straight track lost itself, felt inclined to talk.
"But what's holding us up?" he asked.
"Montreal express. She's on the next section, and it's quite a long one. They side-track everything to let her through."
A thought took shape in Nevis's mind. The point that suggested itself appeared at least worth attention, and he asked a question:
"Would a wire to anybody in the district be sent to the station ahead?"
The conductor said that it would, and added that the man in charge of the place where they were then stopping was called up only in case of necessity to hold a train on the side-track. He explained that although the instruments clicked out any message sent right along the circuit the operators, as a rule, listened only when they got their particular signal. This had a certain significance to Nevis.
"Is there often a freight-train waiting here when you come along?" he asked.
"That's so," said his companion. "We take the section if the Atlantic flyer's late, and they have to cut out the pick-up freight if she's in front of us. When she was standing yonder one night a little while back I saw what struck me as quite a curious thing. Just as we struck the tail switches a man dropped off a caboose coupled on behind the freight-cars; it was good clear moonlight, and I watched him. He kept the train between him and the shack behind you, and started out over the prairie as fast as he could. Then we ran in behind the freight-cars, but as soon as we were clear the engineer pulled them out, and as I looked back the man dropped into the grass like a stone. Bill, who runs this place, was standing outside his shack, and that may have had something to do with it."