Page:Harold Titus--Timber.djvu/80

72 talk he knew those lanes which made a checker-board of the forest were fire lines. The idea that this folly of Helen Foraker's was no casual happening took shape rapidly in his mind. Also, the idea that this girl was a person of consequence grew with each detail he learned of her—

They left the forest, crossed plains, climbed a ridge and came into a hardwood slashing, with limbs and branches a tangle on the ground, cordwood stacked here and there and an occasional lonely and crippled sapling standing above the ruin. The road branched, the ruts faded out, they dodged stumps and finally came to a stop.

"This is yours, isn't it?" she asked.

"Search me! I've never been here before; I was depending on finding White."

"Then you didn't even know he was gone?"

"Not until I got to Pancake."

She started to speak, but checked herself and looked at him searchingly.

"Where's the railroad?" he asked.

"Railroad? Why, the right-of-way is over yonder a half mile; the steel's been taken up."

"Taken up?"

"Didn't you know that?" she asked.

He shook his head. Her incredulous question seemed to take all the strength from him and he felt a sudden natural, unreasoned need to talk.

"I didn't know anything about this, it seems," he burst out. "You know and Lucius knows; Jim Harris knew, and my father's attorney in Detroit; my father himself knew and his secretary knew. I came up here to do the first piece of work I've ever tackled, so