Read "The Boy Ranchers of Puget Sound" by Harold Bindloss online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
A day or two after they had got back to the ranch Mr. Oliver asked the boys if they would like another trip, and as both of them preferred it to grubbing stumps they paddled off to the canoe with him the same evening. A fresh breeze sprang up as the sun went down, and they had a fast and rather wet sail. Daylight was breaking across the scattered pines when the party left the sloop and walked up a trail within sight of a little lonely settlement.
As they approached it a harsh clanking and the tolling of a bell rose from behind the trees, and they had to wait while a locomotive and a string of freight cars jolted across the trail into a neighboring side track. When the train had passed Mr. Oliver and his companions crossed the rails and entered a desolate flag station, which consisted of a roughly boarded, iron-roofed shack and a big water tank. In front of it was an open space strewn with fir stumps, and beyond the latter three or four frame houses rose among the trees. The door of the shack was shut, and while they stood outside it the sound of an approaching train grew steadily louder and a jet of steam blew noisily from the valve of the locomotive waiting in the side track.