Gillis brought five cayuses to the rear of the station, and in a few minutes his practised hands loaded two of them with their luggage.
The small cavalcade moved up the dusty road in a single file, with Douglas in the lead. They overtook and met numbers of freight wagons, going in and out, the drivers shouting greetings to each other in foreign tongues. They passed the track-laying machine, which was throwing the heavy rails about as if they were matches in giant hands. Guards stopped them without the zone of flying débris while giant blasts rent the air as if some titanic monster had torn the earth asunder. Huge rocks soared above the trees, then crashed to the ground with sickening thuds, while small pebbles spattered about them.
Through the trees they saw a cloud of steam and smoke. The air was shrill with incessant quick steam-whistles as a huge steam-shovel growled and tore like a ravenous monster at the gravelled hillside. Four men bearing a stretcher came slowly down the trail. A man on horseback, wearing riding-breeches and leather leggings, rode in their wake.
“How are you, Doctor Paul?” greeted Douglas. “Is it a serious accident?”
“Tree fell on him. Broke both legs, and he is hurt internally—won’t live,” answered the doctor in a low voice.
Donald glimpsed the face of the sufferer showing ashen through a stubby beard. Bloody bandages framed two crimson-stained lips, from which issued gurgling groans of agony. They moved on in silence for a few moments.
“When people ride in trains,” observed Gillis “there ain’t one in a thousand that knows what it costs in sufferin’ and lives to make it so’s they can ride in comfort.”
By mid-afternoon they came to the vanguard of the army of workers, the men who were clearing the right-of-way. At intervals they could hear the long-drawn cry of the choppers as the top of a giant tree shivered and then with a great rending crash fell to earth with a resounding roar. Here they came to the end of the new road, and with a feeling of relief they plunged into the cool shadow of the virgin woods. After the great clamour, the forest, through which the trail wandered deviously, seemed steeped in primal calm. The roar of the blasts no longer came in definite crashes, but was smothered by the distance to a muffled rumble.