But on the afternoon of the third day as they sat out at the edge of the clearing on a pile of balsam that he had gathered for her she began to talk of leaving. They would be wondering back there on the paper what had become of her and there was work to be done.
He could not take his eye off the diamond ring on her finger as she spoke. "They" she had said; but it was probably "he" that she thought, and he chucked a stone clean down to the water-tank, surprised that he could throw that far. The injured ankle was no longer an excuse for delaying their departure. So they planned to leave next day, boarding a chance freight and riding down the line to some station where they could catch the Toronto Express.
Several trains passed every day each way. Even as they sat there they heard the familiar rumble somewhere far off among the low hills westward. They listened to the growing noise of its approach. Presently the smoke of the engine became visible and around the curve, far up the track, the train trailed into view, a freight, the cars swinging into line and hiding behind the black front of the locomotive. The engineer was bowling her down towards them full "lickety-belt" with no intention of stopping to take on water—a through freight apparently.
With a deafening roar she swept in, the engineer jogging laxly on his cushions. Kendrick stood up and hollered at him. The salutation was acknowledged with a friendly wave of the hand. The long string of brown and yellow cars followed rattle-de-bang over the switch and rocked away eastward. The roar dropped off abruptly into diminuendo, punctuated by the rattle of a loose truck at the rear of the caboose.
From the cupola a brakeman with a dirty blue bandana knotted about his brown throat, waved to them and shouted something which they could not hear. He held aloft a white stick from which he had peeled the green bark, pointed to it, then cast it back towards them and pointed to it significantly.
"There's a paper of some kind fastened to it," said Phil as he signalled that he understood.
They gazed after the end of the caboose until the fluttering green flags faded out in the swirl of dust that pursued into the distance. Then Kendrick scrambled down to find the message. It was in a sealed envelope, bound around the stick with twine. One glance at the yellow telegram inside sent him back up the embankment towards the girl as fast as he could climb.
"Of all things, Miss Lawson!" he called out. "It's a wire from the Chief. I left a note for him, telling him where we were going, and just read this, sent down from the operator at Indian Creek. What do you make of it?"
She read it aloud, frowning in perplexity:
Philip Kendrick, Toronto, July 27. at Thorlakson Siding, via Indian Creek.