Keith McBain's camp lay some twelve or fifteen miles up the valley to the north and west. With two hours to make the trip they had ample time, without much loitering, to reach camp before the men should leave the grade for supper. They followed the freighters' trail that wound in and out, now skirting the edge of the right-of-way, now heading into the standing poplars, or running out across open reaches of green plain. Before the summer's end the steel gang would have laid the rails and the first trains would have steamed into the valley from beyond the hills. Even now the gang of engineers and levellers were close upon the heels of the graders, giving the road-bed its final touches before the steel was laid.
Cherry and King rode along easily, without hurrying their horses, King listening while Cherry did most of the talking. Here and there new beauties came to meet them in the curving trail and waving grass and tall white poplars with glistening leaves and white powdered trunks. They crossed a half-dozen little streams of clear water rippling over gravel and shale. Frequently they came out where they caught a distant view of the hills that lay to the north of the valley, pale blue and lying low upon the horizon, like a fringe of dark cloud. To-day they were a very pale blue, and Cherry smiled as she pointed to them and reminded King of what she had told him in the meadow.
"You see--it isn't going to rain for days," she said. "See how smoky the hills are."
King extended his hand and leaned towards her. The horses moved closer together in instinct born of training at the hands of practised riders, and King's arm went about Cherry as he drew her close to him.
He seemed about to speak, but kissed her instead.
The next moment they were off at a brisk run along a stretch of open trail.
It was not yet six o'clock when the trail took them out upon the right-of-way a scant half mile from where Keith McBain's men were still at work on the grade. King drew his horse in and stood for some time gazing down the open right-of-way towards the workers, and then turned to look behind him, where the grade stretched far into the distance and was lost in the closing perspective.
"I like this," he said to Cherry, who had drawn rein beside him. "There's something about it all that makes a man glad he has lived and taken some little part in it. If we could see the world in the making--I think it would be something like this."