The speeders were going the other way now.
The contractor stumbled to the shack like a blind man and sank in a chair.
"My God!" he breathed.
Three miles down the track, in what remained of a deserted end-of-steel village, Sergeant Mahon sat in his shirt sleeves, smiling across the corner of a table into the eyes of his wife, the only white woman, except Tressa Torrance, within a day's hard ride.
Of the village that ten months before covered a life as fevered as it was unclean, only the Police barracks remained in repair, since life had passed the rest by and forgotten it. The ill-defined streets, incorporated as a part of the plan of the original village only because the helter-skelter builders knew no other plan for a village, were more ill-defined than ever because less used. Where nothing but pedestrians passed, where the "Mayor" was merely proprietor of the leading dance-hall, where there was no to-morrow, there had never been side-walks. Now the space from ruined shack to tumble-down shop was overgrown with weeds. Yet down the length of it, meandering drunkenly to avoid butts of stumps as solid as the day they were axed, and steering clear of creeping decay in the buildings themselves, a narrow path felt its way.
The two Policemen were not the sole occupants of Mile 127, as the village had been known in its day. Murphy's train crew, less particular than the Mounted Police, had satisfied themselves with minor repairs to the most reputable of the shacks. Murphy himself, and his foreman friend 'Uggins, more exclusive even than the Police, had drawn their skirts aside from anything savouring of the swift but gay life of the days of grade construction, and erected for themselves a tent where the only real comfort was the opportunity it gave to sneer at their more lowly companions, and a fond but scarce justified hope that they were immune from the torments of formerly inhabited buildings. Murphy openly scored anything "any damned bohunk ever scratched himself in," and, after days of quarreling with 'Uggins about a site, during which they struggled miserably along beneath separate ground-sheets, a common tent was decided upon far from the former selection of each and close to the new siding where "Mollie," the engine, slept at nights.
Helen Mahon was smiling back into her husband's eyes, shyly but happily, for she was proud of him—proud, too, of the loving little trick she had played on him by riding up to the barracks only a couple of hours ago, when he thought her still in Medicine Hat. Having been married to him only a few months, she was still a little shy with her happiness.
"Helen," he exclaimed for the tenth time, "I don't believe it's true. Williams is going to dig his heel into me and tell me I'm snoring. I always do when I dream."
"And you don't like dreaming?" she asked slyly.
"As a dream," he corrected, "it's a ripper. At the same time I'd like to have some help to realise it. How did you manage it? Of course every one knows you have Inspector Barker in the hollow of your hand, but there were others to win over."