"We go right now," Tesno said.
As it turned out, they were delayed by the arrival of Rejack, who came rumbling up the road with a new freight wagon as Tesno was saddling his horse. He inspected the boiler and then backed the wagon into the cut by lantern light before he unhitched the team.
"We'll be loaded and moving by sun-up," he said, looking pleased.
"No," Tesno said. "Load, but don't start the boiler up that grade till I get back. Those rascals know it wasn't damaged, and if I should happen to miss them, they might try the same stunt all over again."
[XIII]
Dawn crept into the world drearily and then lavishly as they made a slow and sinuous ride through tangled gulches and trailless forest, up horse-crippling grades and down shale-slippery slopes. After a good hour of this roundabout traveling, Muckamuck Charlie halted at the foot of a rounded, thickly timbered hill. He sniffed the air and announced that the tenas house, the cabin, was on the far side of this.
"Them son-of-a-gun wake up," he said, sniffing again. "Cook breakfast. When we gonna eat?"
As they wound up through the trees, Tesno, too, could smell smoke. When they were over the crest, had tied the horses and were proceeding on foot, it was visible, lying in motionless layers among the pines.
"Fire out now," Charlie said.