“Well,” he said, “I fancy I can promise that he shall, at least, have an opportunity of putting that project through. You haven’t, however, told me where the railroad bridge is.”
The girl made him understand how he could most 126 easily reach it, and, while she was explaining the various roads he must follow, there was a beat of hoofs outside. Wisbech rose and held out his hand.
“I expect that is the man with my horse, and I’m afraid I have kept you talking a very long while.” He pressed her hand as he half apologized. “I wonder if you will permit me to come back again some time?”
Laura said it would afford her and her father pleasure, and she did not smile when he went out and scrambled awkwardly into his saddle. The man who had brought the horse up grinned broadly as he watched Wisbech jolt across the clearing.
“I guess that man’s not going to make the settlement on that horse. He rides ’most like a bag of flour,” he remarked, with evident enjoyment of the stranger’s poor horsemanship.
CHAPTER XIII
ON THE TRESTLE
It was with difficulty that Wisbech reached the railroad track upon which Laura Waynefleet had told him Nasmyth was occupied. From the winding waggon-road, he was forced to scramble down several hundred feet through tangled undergrowth, and over great fallen logs. Then he had to walk along the ties, which were spaced most inconveniently apart, neither far enough for a long stride nor close enough for a short one. It is, in fact, unless one is accustomed to it, a particularly wearying thing to walk any distance along a Western railroad track; since local ticket rates are usually high on the Pacific slope, and roads of any other kind are not always available, the smaller ranchers and other impecunious travellers frequently tramp miles upon the ties.