And from the shadows moved one solitary Indian and his squaw, one inoffensive little broncho, one great mongrel Russian wolf hound.
"Phew!" breathed the Indian, as he snapped his rifle shut and reached up to fondle the horse's ears.
CHAPTER XXII
NIGHT—AND THE MYSTERIOUS SPEEDERS
Big Jim Torrance sighed happily. He was thinking of the orders he had issued for the commencement of the fill-in. In the definition thus given to the task he found the most effective silencer of every fear.
Supply trains had multiplied of late, but not the heaviest had made so much as a visible tremble in the trestle; and he should know, for he watched with bated breath and expert eye. Even the crews were teasing that they hoped once more to see home and mother. Torrance accepted their banter with a pleased grin, and hurried to tell it word for word to Tressa and Adrian.
Yet as darkness fell flashes of the old restraint held him silent and wondering. The solitude of the northern evening was making him a bit frightened of his success. Removing the old calabash pipe from his lips, he expectorated thoughtfully toward the grade.
Just within the door Tressa sat as silent as her father. In all her silent moments now she was building, building. Conrad—home—a father far from the harsh influences of this rough life where man fought man as well as nature, and quite as brutally. The rapping of her father's pipe against the doorpost interrupted her dreams.
"On Thursday!" he said. "I've spoken to Murphy. There'll be four ballast trains here on Saturday, two working each way. Another ten days will see the thing through. The big cutting at Mile 135 will have a steam scoop to fill a train in a few minutes; it's a solid gravel bank there, they say. We'll lift the heart out of it and put it to beat in that trestle of mine to the end of time."
He laughed proudly, with a touch of sheepishness at the unaccustomed metaphor.