She gurgled joyously and seized his hand to press it against her cheek and nibble lovingly at the finger tips.
"Inspector Barker did it all. He's got a way with him, and I just made him pull the wires right up to the Commissioner, I guess. Anyway, here I am, and there's nobody defied by it. I suppose they reckoned that any wife who thinks enough of her husband to travel two days by train, then two more on horseback, is worth encouraging for the salvation of his soul. To sum up: I'm here for a month, if you'll let me stay."
The laugh with which he greeted it was not so free and spontaneous as she hoped to hear. "In less than that," he said fervently, "I hope we'll be back in Medicine Hat. Torrance is giving orders to start the fill-in, and there won't be more than two or three weeks after that. Truth to tell, there are lots of other reasons than home that make me want to get out of it in a hurry. It isn't that we have much to do—too little, indeed; I'd grow rusty and evil-tempered with another season of this—but I confess to a great mental blank in considering the bohunk . . . and I've no ambition to understand him better. The more I know him, the more I think Providence was experimenting without encouragement when he created a few of those Continental countries that send their scum over here to build railways. Really there hasn't been a thing happen since I came worth writing about. Of course there are strange little incidents—"
He broke off abruptly and his head went up. From the east drifted a purring sound that swelled with startling speed. Faster than their thoughts, it grew to a roar. Helen was alarmed.
"Only gasoline speeders," he explained. "You must ride on one. Torrance has a rather grubby specimen. They're the wildest form of slimpsy-skimpsy flight you ever saw. About forty miles an hour, with just a board and a tremendous sputter between you and the flying rails. It makes your hair curl, yet you look forward to the next time."
Lightly as he spoke, he had risen to his feet and gone to the doorway.
"Some of the big moguls of construction, I suppose," he shouted back above the echoing din. "Perhaps to pass on Torrance's trestle before the fill-in commences. Holy mackinaw! they're scorching. I ought to arrest them for exceeding the speed limit. . . . They're without lights, too!" he exclaimed suddenly.
Two dim objects flew past in the darkness like shadows, not forty yards away, a space of less than fifty yards between them.
"They must be drunk!" he muttered. "They're taking awful chances to run as close as that at such a speed. Look as if they're loaded. Rush stuff, I suppose, for the line further west. . . . I hope they don't try to take Torrance's trestle at that gait; it would be an awful plunge." He returned thoughtfully to the table. "First time I've seen a speeder along here, except Torrance's and the contractor's at Mile 190. . . . I don't understand it."
Helen closed the door firmly. The roar dimmed into the trees.