Explore "The Mistress of Bonaventure" by Harold Bindloss on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Lane troubled us no further, and there came a time when those who had suffered under him, and at last assisted in his overthrow, would laugh boisterously at my narrative of his hasty exit from the prairie with the troopers hard upon his heels. They appeared to consider the description of how, with characteristic audacity, he bade us an ironical farewell one cold morning from the doorway of a lonely ranch an appropriate finale, and bantered the sergeant upon his tardiness. The latter would answer them dryly that the Dominion was well quit of Lane.
Some time, however, passed before this came about, and meanwhile winter closed in on the prairie. It was, save for one uncertainty which greatly troubled me, a tranquil winter -- for I had, in addition to promising schemes for the future, a balance in the bank -- but not wholly uneventful. Before the first snow had fallen, men with theodolites and compasses invaded Crane Valley, and left inscribed posts behind them when they passed. This was evidently a preliminary survey; but it showed the railroad was coming at last, although, as the men could tell us nothing, there remained the somewhat important question whether it would follow that or an alternative route.