Then, for a thousand miles, the road pierced a wilderness where the traffic would not pay for locomotive coal. The men who pushed the line across the rocks and woods obviously had pluck. Moreover, when the road reached the plains, but for the Red River settlement, Manitoba was a wilderness. In the West, the plow followed the locomotive and where the rails went homesteads sprang up.
Kit thought the engineers’ haste was justified. They started the trains running and afterwards filled up the muskegs and cut out awkward curves. North Americans did not expect their work to stand; their children would use fresh plans. At Montreal merchants pulled down office blocks and built higher. The streets were bordered by scaffold poles, cranes rattled, and cement blew about. All was growing; one saw no static calm. Turmoil and destruction of the obsolete marked the nation’s swift advance.
Kit, however, did not want to philosophize, and he studied the construction gang. Old Country methods were obviously out of date; the engineers were not going to throw off the ballast by hand. The cars’ sides went down and the big plow forged ahead. A cataract of stones marked its progress along the train, and the shovel gang went forward behind the noisy wave. Hollows vanished and a bank of gravel soon stretched across the gap. Men dragged clanging rails and hammers beat.
“Everybody has got his job; I don’t see a fellow who could slack,” Kit remarked and laughed. “In a way, their hustling’s ominous. To keep up with a lot like that would bother a stranger!”
After a time the gravel train steamed away, and Kit and Alison went back along the line. Alison cooked supper, and when all was ready Kit picked up the basket.
“We shall not need the stuff that’s left and I don’t expect the emigrants’ children have got very much,” he said.
Alison agreed and Kit carried the basket to the Colonist car. She thought him melancholy, and when he came back she smiled. She herself was not cheerful, but at their last supper she must not brood. She served the meal and when Kit began to banter her she joked. The jokes, however, were flat and her appetite was not good. By and by she heard the conductor shout: “All aboard. Next stop’s Winnipeg.”
The cars jolted and the wheels began to roll. Alison put up the tin plates and got her sewing bag. The train slowly crossed the mended line and plunged into the woods. Rocks and tangled pines rolled by and thick smoke blew about the shaking cars. Kit studied the newspaper; Alison sewed and mused.
CHAPTER XI
THE ROAD FORKS
Winnipeg station was crowded by dejected emigrants. The broken line had disorganized the traffic and nobody knew when the west-bound trains would start, but the fashionable young woman at the information office thought none would go for two or three hours. Kit saw his polite inquiries bored her, but she haughtily indicated the telegraph office, and when he sent off Alison’s message they started for the town.