The
small engine, more reliable and quite as powerful as a hundred men, was
in perfect order. It abounded in valves and taps, but Walker's parting
instructions were explicit:
"Keep yo' eye on the glass, an' pitch in a shovel of coal evewy ten
minutes: she'll do the west."
So the new hand, satisfied that the gage was correct and the furnace
lively, lit his pipe, sat down, and began to jot in a note-book the
contents of his coat-pockets. The Spaniard's letters he could not read,
though he gathered that one of them was from a wife in Vallodolid, who
would travel overland early in January to meet her husband. But the
Englishman's correspondence was terribly explicit. A "heart-broken
mother" wrote from Liverpool that "Jack" had been shot during one of the
many cold-weather campaigns on the Indian frontier. "I have no news,
simply a telegram from the War Office. But of what avail to know how my
darling died. My tears are blinding me. You and I alone are left, and
you are thousands of miles away. May the Lord be merciful to me, a
widow, and bring you home to comfort me." Yet the knife which killed him
must have gone very near that letter.
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