"Yes," replied Alaric; "if we had it now, we'd be all right. But I'll tell you, Bonny, what I'll do. If you will get me to San Francisco inside of a week, I promise that you shall have one hundred dollars the day we arrive."
"I'll do it!" cried Bonny. "I know you are joking, of course, but I'll do it just to see how you'll manage to crawl out of your bargain when we get there. You mustn't expect to travel in a private car, though, with a French cook, and three square meals a day thrown in."
"Yes, I do," laughed Alaric, "for I never travelled any other way."
"No, I know you haven't, any more'n I have; but just for a change, I think we'd better try freight cars, riding on trucks, and perhaps once in a while in a caboose, for this trip, with meals whenever we can catch 'em. We'll get there, though; I promise you that. Hello! I mustn't lose that ball. We may want to have a game on the road."
This last remark was called forth by Alaric's baseball, which, becoming uncomfortably bulgy in Bonny's pocket as he sat on the car floor, he had taken out, and had been tossing from hand to hand as he talked. At length it slipped from him, rolled across the car, and out of the open door.
Bonny sprang after it, tossed it in to Alaric, and was about to clamber back into the car, when, through the gathering gloom, he spied a familiar figure standing in the glare of one of the station lights.
"Wait here a few minutes, Rick," he said, "while I go and find out when our train starts."
With this he darted up the track, and a moment later advanced, with a smile of recognition and extended hand, toward the stranger whom he had so pitied in the logging camp the day before. The man still wore a shabby suit, and the hat Bonny had given to him. He started at sight of the lad, and exclaimed:
"How came you here so soon? I thought you weren't due until eight o'clock?"
"How did you know we were coming at all?" asked Bonny, in amazement.