“Yes, you’ll strike a sand bed or an alkali mine. Here’s a list of four quarters I have looked over personally. They appear in the order of my preference. Take it, you’re welcome to it.”
There was a look of gratitude in the boy’s eyes which could find no expression in words. The two friends held each other’s hand a moment in a firm grasp, and then Burton hurried toward the station. He reached it just in time to buy a ticket and board his train.
Once in a car and seated, the lights of the city died out of view, and Burton was left to collect his thoughts. His sudden resolution to go to his trial regardless of consequences had left him bereft of any plan of campaign or any definite course of action. For months he had studied how he might evade the law, but now his only fear was that he might not reach Plainville in time to appear before the Court and receive his sentence. That he would be found guilty he took as a matter of course. He did not deceive himself with any hope of acquittal on any ground whatever. He was not going back to match himself against his fate; he was going back to accept his fate. He wondered how long his sentence would be. It might be one year, it might be five; it might be ten. That he supposed would depend in some degree upon the digestion of the judge, and whether his lordship might decide to make an example of him for the benefit of other evil-doers.
But he felt only a casual interest in these matters. To his great surprise neither judge, jury nor jail had any terror for him. He regarded them with an impersonal feeling of unconcern, except a desire to be done with all of them. He wondered if they would let him wear his own shirts in jail.
He consulted a time-table, and found that if he made all connections he should reach Plainville in the early morning of the first day of the assizes. He supposed there would be a short session of the grand jury first, but did not know whether his absence then would affect his trial. He wondered if they would call his case first and immediately require Gardiner to forfeit his bail, and if they would return the bail when he appeared and gave himself up.
For twenty-four hours the train drilled steadily eastward, running without incident. Darkness had again settled down and the hour of midnight was approaching when suddenly the emergency brakes were applied with a force that threw the passengers forward in their seats. The train came to a stop in a moment, and the young men and a few of the older ones who had not gone to bed in the sleeping cars crowded out to see the cause of the delay. A dull glow shone down the track from ahead, and a whiff of wood smoke blew in their nostrils. Aside from that and the subdued lights in the cars all was darkness, darkness intense and illimitable, walled in only by the brooding silence of the great prairies.
A couple of trainmen with lanterns were seen walking on the track, and Burton hurried to overtake them. As he advanced the glow of light became brighter and the smell of smoke more noticeable. In a few minutes he had come up with them, and together they reached a wooden trestle which spanned a ravine where a little stream trickled at the bottom during the summer, but was now dried by the long period of rainless weather. The bridge was on fire; most of the timbers had already given way, and the hot rails hung in two shining streaks from bank to bank.
From the conversation of the trainmen Burton gathered that the fire was probably due to a falling coal from a passing engine lighting the woodwork. He ventured to ask how long it would delay the train.
“Well, that’s hard to say,” was the answer. “It’ll take at least twelve hours to throw a temporary bridge in there after the work train arrives, and they won’t likely be here before morning. The company knows nothing about it yet, so we’ll likely have to pull back to the last station to give information.”
And the assize court at Plainville sat the next morning!