“This is the Pass,—yes. Come, hurry up.”
“Then I’ve come all the fur I’m goin’.”
As if to signify that his interest was over, the conductor waved his hand to the engineers peering from their cabs ahead. The brakemen scampered for their cars. The locomotives puffed and snorted and the long train began to move. As the conductor swung on he called back sarcastically:
“Sorry we couldn’t wait while you fixed it up. Wish you joy of your bargain.”
In another instant the train was swinging around into a long cut between deep, rocky walls. In yet another instant it was gone, and Ralph Stetson, with a rather puzzled expression on his good-looking face, stood confronting the scarecrow-like object he had rescued from the brakeman. In the tenement-house district of any large city the pitiful figure might not have looked out of place.
But here, in the Canadian Rockies, with a boiling, leaping torrent racing under a slender trestle, great scraps of rocks and pine and balsam-clad mountains towering above, and in the distance the mighty peaks of the Selkirks looming against the clean-swept blue, the spectacle that this waif of the big towns presented seemed almost ludicrous in its contrast. Ralph felt it so at least, for he smiled a little as he looked at the disreputable figure before him and asked:
“What are you doing at Pine Pass?”
The question was certainly a natural one. Besides the tiny station, no human habitation was in sight. Above it, threatening to crush it seemingly, towered a precipice of dark colored rock. Beyond this rose mighty pines, cliffs, waterfalls and, finally, climbing fields of snow. Everywhere peaks and summits loomed with a solitary eagle wheeling far above. In the air was the thunderous voice of the torrent as it tumbled along under the spidery trestle beyond the station, and the sweet, clean fragrance of the pines.
“What’m I doin’ at Pine Pass?” The ragged youth repeated the question. “I-I’m sorry, mister, but I can’t tell yer.” He paused, and a strange, wistful look came into his eyes as he gazed at the distant peaks, “I thought some time I’d get up among them mountains; but there’s a heap more of ’em than I calculated on.”
“How did you get here? Where did you come from?” pursued Ralph.