When she emerged, dressed, into the saloon--she found Yerkes looking out of the window in a brown study. He was armed with a dusting brush and a white apron, but it did not seem to her that he had been making much use of them.
"Whatever is the matter, Yerkes? What is a sink-hole?"
Yerkes looked round.
"A sink-hole, my lady?" he said slowly--"A sink-hole, well, it's as you may say--a muskeg."
"A what?"
"A place where you can't find no bottom, my lady. This one's a vixen, she is! What she's cost the C.P.R.!"--he threw up his hands. "And there's no contenting her--the more you give her the more she wants. They give her ten trainloads of stuff a couple of months ago. No good! A bit of moist weather and there she is at it again. Let an engine and two carriages through last night--ten o'clock!"
"Gracious! Was anybody hurt? What--a kind of bog?--a quicksand?"
"Well," said Yerkes, resuming his dusting, and speaking with polite obstinacy, "muskegs is what they call 'em in these parts. They'll have to divert the line. I tell 'em so, scores of times. She was at this game last year. Held me up twenty-one hours last fall."
When Yerkes was travelling he spoke in a representative capacity. He was the line.
"How many trains ahead of us are there? Yerkes?"