CHAPTER XXIV.The Beginning of the End.
CHAPTER XXIV.
The Beginning of the End.
Court parties and court factions are always known to the populace, even down to the groom and scullions. So the defection of Cornish soon became a matter of gossip at bars, in stables, and especially about the desks of real-estate offices. Had it been a matter of armed internecine strife, the Elkins faction would have mustered an overwhelming majority; for Jim’s bluff democratic ways, and his apparent identity of fibre with the mass of the people, would have made him a popular idol, had he been a thousand times a railroad president.
While these rumors of a feud were floating about, Captain Tolliver went to Jim’s office several times, dressed with great care, and sat in silence, and in stiff and formal dignity, for a matter of five minutes or so, and then retired, with the suggestion that if there was any way in which he could serve Mr. Elkins he should be happy.
“Do you know,” said Jim to me, “that I’m afraid Hamlet’s ’bugs and goblins’ are troubling Tolliver; in other words, that he’s getting bughouse?”
“No,” said I; “while I haven’t the slightest ideawhat ails him, you’ll find that it’s something quite natural for him when you get a full view of his case.”
Finally, Jim, in thanking him for his proffered assistance, inquired diplomatically after the thing which weighed upon the Captain’s mind.
“I may be mistaken, suh,” said he, drawing himself up, and thrusting one hand into the tightly-buttoned breast of his black Prince Albert, “entiahly mistaken in the premises; but I have the impression that diffe’ences of a pussonal nature ah in existence between youahself and a gentleman whose name in this connection I prefuh to leave unmentioned. Such being the case, I assume that occasion may and naturally will arise foh the use of a friend, suh, who unde’stands the code—the code, suh—and is not without experience in affaiahs of honah. I recognize the fact that in cehtain exigencies nothing, by Gad, but pistols, ovah a measu’ed distance, meets the case. In such an event, suh, I shall be mo’ than happy to suhve you; mo’ than happy, by the Lord!”
“Captain,” said Jim feelingly, “you’re a good fellow and a true friend, and I promise you I shall have no other second.”
“In that promise,” replied the Captain gravely, “you confeh an honah, suh!”
After this it was thought wise to permit the papers to print the story of Cornish’s retirement; otherwise the Captain might have fomented an insurrection.
“The reasons for this step on the part of Mr. Cornish are purely personal,” said theHerald. “While retaining his feeling of interest in Lattimore, hisdesire to engage in certain broader fields of promotion and development in the tropics had made it seem to him necessary to lay down the work here which up to this time he has so well done. He will still remain a citizen of our city. On the other hand, while we shall not lose Mr. Cornish, we shall gain the active and powerful influence of Mr. Charles Harper, the president of the Frugality and Indemnity Life Insurance Company. It is thus that Lattimore rises constantly to higher prosperity, and wields greater and greater power. The remarkable activity lately noted in the local real-estate market, especially in the sales of unconsidered trifles of land at high prices, is to be attributed to the strengthening of conditions by these steps in the ascent of the ladder of progress.”
Cornish, however, was not without his partisans. Cecil Barr-Smith almost quarreled with Antonia because she struck Cornish off her books, Cecil insisting that he was an entirely decent chap. In this position Cecil was in accord with the clubmen of the younger sort, who had much in common with Cornish, and little with the overworked and busy railway president. Even Giddings, to me, seemed to remain unduly intimate with Cornish; but this did not affect the utterances of his paper, which still maintained what he called the policy of boost.
The behavior of Josie, however, was enigmatical. Cornish’s attentions to her redoubled, while Jim seemed dropped out of the race—and therefore my wife’s relations with Miss Trescott were subjected to a severe strain. Naturally, being a matron, and of theage of thirty-odd years, she put on some airs with her younger friend, still in the chrysalis of maidenhood. Sometimes, in a sweet sort of a way, she almost domineered over her. On this Elkins-Cornish matter, however, Josie held her at arms’ length, and refused to make her position plain; and Alice nursed that simulated resentment which one dear friend sometimes feels toward another, because of a real or imagined breach of the obligations of reciprocity.
One night, as we sat about the grate in the Trescott library, some veiled insinuations on Alice’s part caused a turning of the worm.
“If there is anything you want to say, Alice,” said Josie, “there seems to be no good reason why you shouldn’t speak out. I have asked your advice—yours and Albert’s—frequently, having really no one else to trust; and therefore I am willing to hear your reproof, if you have it for me. What is it?”
“Oh, Josie,” said I, seeking cover. “You are too sensitive. There isn’t anything, is there, Alice?”
Here I scowled violently, and shook my head at my wife; but all to no effect.
“Yes, there is,” said Alice. “We have a dear friend, the best in the world, and he has an enemy. The whole town is divided in allegiance between them, about nine on one side to one on the other—”
“Which proves nothing,” said Josie.
“And now,” Alice went on, “you, who have had every opportunity of seeing, and ought to know, that one of them is, in every look, and thought, and act, aman, while the other is—”
“A friend of mine and of my mother’s,” said Josie; “please omit the character-sketch. And remember that I refuse even to consider these business differences. Each claims to be right; and I shall judge them by other things.”
“Business differences, indeed!” scoffed Alice, albeit a little impressed by the girl’s dignity. “As if you did not know what these differences came from! But it isn’t because you remain neutral that we com—”
“Youcomplain, Alice,” said I; “I am distinctly out of this.”
“That I complain, then,” amended Alice reproachfully. “It is because you dismiss themanand keep the—other! You may say I have no right to be heard in this, but I’m going to complain Josie Trescott, just the same!”
This seemed to approach actual conflict, and I was frightened. Had it been two men, I should have thought nothing of it, but with women such differences cut deeper than with us. Josie stepped to her writing-desk and took from it a letter.
“We may as well clear this matter up,” said she, “for it has stood between us for a long time. I think that Mr. Elkins will not feel that any confidences are violated by my showing you this—you who have been my dearest friends—”
She stopped for no reason, unless it was agitation.
“Are,” said I, “I hope, not ‘have been.’”
“Well,” said she, “read the letter, and then tell me who has been ‘dismissed.’”
I shrank from reading it; but Alice was determinedto know all. It was dated the day before I left New York.
“Dear Josie,” it read, “I have told you so many times that I love you that it is an old story to you; yet I must say it once more. Until that night when we brought your father home, I was never able to understand why you would never say definitely yes or no to me; but I felt that you could not be expected to understand my feeling that the best years of our lives were wasting—you are so much younger than I—and so I hoped on. Sometimes I feared that somebody else stood in the way, and do fear it now, but that alone would have been a much simpler thing, and of that I could not complain. But on that fearful night you said something which hurt me more than anything else could, because it was an accusation of which I could not clear myself in the court of my own conscience—except so far as to say that I never dreamed of doing your father anything but good. Surely, surely you must feel this!
“Since that time, however, you have been so kind to me that I have become sure that you see that terrible tragedy as I do, and acquit me of all blame, except that of blindly setting in motion the machinery which did the awful deed. This is enough for you to forgive, God knows; but I have thought lately that you had forgiven it. You have been very kind and good to me, and your presence and influence have made me look at things in a different way from that of years ago, and I am now doing things which ought to be credited to you, so far as they aregood. As for the bad, I must bear the blame myself!”
Thus far Alice had read aloud.
“Don’t, don’t,” said Josie, hiding her face. “Don’t read it aloud, please!”
“But now I am writing, not to explain anything which has taken place, but to set me right as to the future. You gave me reason to think, when we met, that I might have my answer. Things which I cannot explain have occurred, which may turn out very evilly for me, and for any one connected with me. Therefore, until this state of things passes, I shall not see you. I write this, not that I think you will care much, but that you may not believe that I have changed in my feelings toward you. If my time ever comes, and I believe it will, and that before very long, you will find me harder to dispose of without an answer than I have been in the past. I shall claim you in spite of every foe that may rise up to keep you from me. You may change, but I shall not.
“‘Love is not loveWhich alters when it alteration finds.’And mine will not alter. J. R. E.”
“My dear,” said Alice very humbly, “I beg your pardon. I have misjudged you. Will you forgive me?”
Josie came to take her letter, and, in lieu of other answer, stood with her arm about Alice’s waist.
“And now,” said Alice, “have you no other confidences for us?”
“No!” she cried, “no! there is nothing more! Nothing, absolutely nothing, believe me! But, now, confidence for confidence, Albert, what is this great danger? Is it anything for which any one here—for which I am to blame? Does it threaten any one else? Can’t something be done about it? Tell me, tell me!”
“I think,” said I, “that the letter was written before my telegram from New York came, and after—some great difficulties came upon us. I don’t believe he would have written it five hours later; and I don’t believe he would have written it to any one in anything but the depression of—the feeling he has for you.”
“If that is true,” said she, “why does he still avoid me? Why does he still avoid me? You have not told me all; or there is something you do not know.”
As we went home, Alice kept referring to Jim’s letter, and was as much troubled by it as was Josie.
“How do you explain it?” she asked.
“I explain it,” said I, “by ranging it with the well-known phenomenon of the love-sick youth of all lands and in every time, who revels in the thought of incurring danger or death, and heralding the fact to his loved one. Even Jim is not exempt from the feelings of the boy who rejoices in delicious tears at the thought of being found cold and dead on the doorstep of the cruel maiden of his dreams. And that letter, with a slight substratum of fact, is the result. Don’t bother about it for a moment.”
This answer may not have been completely frank, or quite expressive of my views; but I was tired of the subject. It was hardly a time to play with mammets or to tilt with lips, and it seemed that the matter might wait. There was a good deal of the pettishness of nervousness among us at that time, and I had my full share of it. Insomnia was prevalent, and gray hairs increased and multiplied. The time was drawing near for our meeting with Pendleton in Chicago. We had advices that he was coming in from the West, on his return from a long journey of inspection, and would pass over his Pacific Division. We asked him to run down to Lattimore over our road, but Smith answered that the running schedule could not be altered.
There seemed to be no reason for doubting that the proposed contract would be ratified; for the last desperate rally on our part appeared to have put a crash out of the question, for some time at least. To him that hath shall be given; and so long as we were supposed to possess power, we felt that we were safe. Yet the blow dealt by Cornish had maimed us, no matter how well we hid our hurt; and we were all too keenly conscious of the law of the hunt, by which it is the wounded buffalo which is singled out and dragged down by the wolves.
On Wednesday Jim and I were to start for Chicago, where Mr. Pendleton would be found awaiting us. On Sunday the weather, which had been cold and snowy for weeks, changed; and it blew from the southeast, raw and chill, but thawy. All dayMonday the warmth increased; and the farmers coming into town reported great ponds of water dammed up in the swales and hollows against the enormous snow-drifts. Another warm day, and these waters would break through, and the streams would go free in freshets. Tuesday dawned without a trace of frost, and still the strong warm wind blew; but now it was from the east, and as I left the carriage to enter my office I was wet by a scattering fall of rain. In a few moments, as I dictated my morning’s letters, my stenographer called attention to the beating on the window of a strong and persistent downpour.
Elkins, too much engrossed in his thoughts to be able to confine himself to the details of his business, came into my office, where, sometimes sitting and sometimes walking uneasily about, he seemed to get some sort of comfort from my presence. He watched the rain, as one seeing visions.
“By morning,” said he, “there ought to be ducks in Alderson’s pond. Can’t we do our chores early and get into the blind before daylight, and lay for ’em?”
“I heard Canada geese honking overhead last night,” said I.
“What time last night?”
“Two o’clock.”
“Well, that lets us out on the Alderson’s pond project,” said he; “the boys who hunted there weren’t out walking at two. In those days they slept. It can’t be that we’re the fellows.... Why, there’s Antonia, coming in through the rain!”
“I wonder,” said I, “if la grippe isn’t taking a bad turn with her father.”
She came in, shedding the rain from her mackintosh like a water-fowl, radiant with health and the air of outdoors.
“Gentlemen,” said she gaily, “who but myself would come out in anything but a diving-suit to-day!”
“It’s almost an even thing,” said Jim, “between a calamity, which brings you, and good fortune, which keeps you away. I hope it’s only your ordinary defiance of the elements.”
“The fact is,” said she, “that it’s a very funny errand. But don’t laugh at me if it’s absurd, please. It’s about Mr. Cornish.”
“Yes!” said Jim, “what of him?”
“You know papa has been kept in by la grippe for a day or so,” she went on, “and we haven’t been allowing people to see him very much; but Mr. Cornish has been in two or three times, and every time when he went away papa was nervous and feverish. To-day, after he left, papa asked—” here she looked at Mr. Elkins, as he stood gravely regarding her, and went on with redder cheeks—“asked me some questions, which led to a long talk between us, in which I found out that he has almost persuaded papa to—to change his business connections completely.”
“Yes!” said Jim. “Change, how?”
“Why, that I didn’t quite understand,” said Antonia, “except that there was logwood and mahogany and Mexico in it, and—and that he had made papa feel very differently toward you. Afterwhat has taken place recently I knew that was wrong—you know papa is not as firm in his ideas as he used to be; and I felt that he—and you, were in danger, somehow. At first I was afraid of being laughed at—why, I’d rather you’d laugh at me than to look likethat!”
“You’re a good girl, Antonia,” said Jim, “and have done the right thing, and a great favor to us. Thank you very much; and please excuse me a moment while I send a telegram. Please wait until I come back.”
“No, I’m going, Albert,” said she, when he was gone to his own office. “But first you ought to know that man told papa something—about me.”
“How do you know about this?” said I.
“Papa asked me—if I had—any complaints to make—of Mr. Elkins’s treatment of me! What do you suppose he dared to tell him?”
“What did you tell your father?” I asked.
“What could I tell him but ‘No’?” she exclaimed. “And I just had a heart-to-heart talk with papa about Mr. Cornish and the way he has acted; and if his fever hadn’t begun to run up so, I’d have got the rubber, or Peruvian-bark idea, or whatever it was, entirely out of his mind. Poor papa! It breaks my heart to see him changing so! And so I gave him a sleeping-capsule, and came down through this splendid rain; and now I’m going! But, mind, this last is a secret.”
And so she went away.
“Where’s Antonia?” asked Jim, returning.
“Gone,” said I.
“I wanted to talk further about this matter.”
“I don’t like it, Jim. It means that the cruel war is not over.”
“Wait until we pass Wednesday,” said Jim, “and we’ll wring his neck. What a poisonous devil, to try and wean from us, to his ruin, an old man in his dotage!—I wish Antonia had stayed. I went out to set the boys wiring for news of washouts between here and Chicago. We mustn’t miss that trip, if we have to start to-night. This rain will make trouble with the track.—No, I don’t like it, either. Wasn’t it thoughtful of Antonia to come down! We can line Hinckley up all right, now we know it; but if it had gone on—we can’t stand a third solar-plexus blow....”
The sky darkened, until we had to turn on the lights, and the rain fell more and more heavily. Once or twice there were jarring rolls of distant thunder. To me there was something boding and ominous in the weather. The day wore on interminably in the quiet of a business office under such a sky. Elkins sent in a telegram which he had received that no trouble with water was looked for along our way to Chicago, which was by the Halliday line. As the dark day was lowering down to its darker close, I went into President Elkins’s office to take him home with me. As I entered through my private door, I saw Giddings coming in through the outer entrance.
“Say,” said he, “I wanted to see you two together. I know you have some business with Pendleton, and you’ve promised the boys a story for Thursday orFriday. Now, you’ve been a little sore on me because I haven’t absolutely cut Cornish.”
“Not at all,” said Jim. “You must have a poor opinion of our intelligence.”
“Well, you had no cause to feel that way,” he went on, “because, as a newspaperman, I’m supposed to have few friends and no enemies. Besides, you can’t tell what a man might sink to, deprived all at once of the friendship of three such men as you fellows!”
“Quite right,” said I; “but get to the point.”
“I’m getting to it,” said he. “I violate no confidence when I say that Cornish has got it in for your crowd in great shape. The point is involved in that. I don’t know what your little game is with old Pendleton, but whatever it is, Cornish thinks he can queer it, and at the same time reap some advantages from the old man, if he can have a few minutes’ talk with Pen before you do. And he’s going to do it, if he can. Now, I figure, with my usual correctness of ratiocination, that your scheme is going to be better for the town, and therefore for theHerald, than his, and hence this disclosure, which I freely admit has some of the ear-marks of bad form. Not that I blame Cornish, or am saying anything against him, you know. His course is ideally Iagoan: he stands in with Pendleton, benefits himself, and gets even with you all at one fell—”
“Stop this chatter!” cried Jim, flying at him and seizing him by the collar. “Tell me how you know this, and how much you know!”
“My God!” said Giddings, his lightness all departed,“is it as vital as that? He told me himself. Said it was something he wouldn’t put on paper and must tell Pendleton by word of mouth, and he’s on the train that just pulled out for Chicago.”
“He’ll beat us there by twelve hours,” said I, “and he can do all he threatens! Jim, we’re gone!”
Elkins leaped to the telephone and rang it furiously. There was the ring of command sounding through the clamor of desperate and dubious conflict in his voice.
“Give me the L. & G. W. dispatcher’s office, quick!” said he. “I can’t remember the number ... it’s 420, four, two, naught. Is this Agnew? This is Elkins talking. Listen! Without a moment’s delay, I want you to find out when President Pendleton’s special, east-bound on his Pacific Division, passes Elkins Junction. I’m at my office, and will wait for the information here.... Don’t let me wait long, please, understand? And, say! Call Solan to the ’phone.... Is this Solan? Mr. Solan, get out the best engine you’ve got in the yards, couple to it a caboose, and put on a crew to make a run to Elkins Junction, as quick as God’ll let you! Do you understand? Give me Schwartz and his fireman.... Yes, and Corcoran, too. Andy, this is a case of life and death—of life and death, do you understand? See that the line’s clear, and no stops. I’ve got to connect east at Elkins Junction with a special on that line....Got to, d’ye see? Have the special wait at the State Street crossing until we come aboard!”
CHAPTER XXV.That Last Weird Battle in the West.
CHAPTER XXV.
That Last Weird Battle in the West.
There was still some remnant of daylight left when we stepped from a closed carriage at the State Street crossing and walked to the train prepared for us. The rain had all but ceased, and what there was came out of some northern quarter of the heavens mingled with stinging pellets of sleet, driven by a fierce gale. The turn of the storm had come, and I was wise enough in weather-lore to see that its rearguard was sweeping down upon us in all the bitterness of a winter’s tempest.
Beyond the tracks I could see the murky water of Brushy Creek racing toward the river under the State Street bridge.
“I believe,” said I, “that the surface-water from above is showing the flow from the flume.”
“Yes,” said Jim absently, “it must be about ready to break up. I hope we can get out of the valley before dark.”
The engine stood ready, the superabundant power popping off in a deafening hiss. The fireman threw open the furnace-door and stoked the fire as we approached. Engineer Schwartz, the same who had pulled us over the road that first trip, was standingby his engine, talking with our old conductor, Corcoran.
“Here’s a message for you, Mr. Elkins,” said Corcoran, handing Jim a yellow paper, “from Agnew.”
We read it by Corcoran’s lantern, for it was getting dusky for the reading of telegraph operator’s script.
“Water out over bottoms from Hinckley to the Hills,” so went the message. “Flood coming down valley. Snow and drifting wind reported from Elkins Junction and Josephine. Look out for washouts, and culverts and bridges damaged by running ice and water. Pendleton special fully up to running schedule, at Willow Springs.”
“Who’ve you got up there, Schwartz? Oh, is that you, Ole?” said Mr. Elkins. “Good! Boys, to-night our work has got to be done in time, or we might as well go to bed. It’s a case of four aces or a four-flush, and no intermediate stations. Mr. Pendleton’s special will pass the Junction right around nine—not ten minutes either way. Get us there before that. If you can do it safely, all right; but get us there. And remember that the regular rule in railroading is reversed to-night, and we are ready to take any chance rather than miss—anychances, mind!”
“We’re ready and waiting, Mr. Elkins,” said Schwartz, “but you’ll have to get on, you know. Looks like there was time enough if we keep the wheels turning, but this snow and flood business may cut some figure.Anychances, I believe you said, sir. All right! Ready when you are, Jack.”
“All aboard!” sang out Corcoran, and with acommonplace ding-dong of the bell, and an every-day hiss of steam, which seemed, somehow, out of keeping with the fearful and unprecedented exigency now upon us, we moved out through the yards, jolting over the frogs, out upon the main line; and soon began to feel a cheering acceleration in the recurrent sounds and shocks of our flight, as Schwartz began rolling back the miles under his flying wheels.
We sat in silence on the oil-cloth cushions of the seats which ran along the sides of the caboose. Corcoran, the only person who shared the car with us, seemed to have some psychical consciousness of the peril which weighed down upon us, and moved quietly about the car, or sat in the cupola, as mute as we.
There was no need for speech between my friend and me. Our minds, strenuously awake, found a common conclusion in the very nature of the case. Both doubtless had considered and rejected the idea of telegraphing Pendleton to wait for us at the Junction. No king upon his throne was more absolute than Avery Pendleton, and to ask him to waste a single quarter-hour of his time might give great offense to him whom we desired to find serene and complaisant. Again, any apparent anxiety for haste, any symptom of an attempt to rush his line of defenses, would surely defeat its object. No, we must quietly and casually board his train, and secure the signing of the contract before we reached Chicago, if possible.
“You brought that paper, Al?” said Jim, as if my thoughts had been audible to him.
“Yes,” said I, “it’s here.”
“I think we’d better be on our way to St. Louis,” said he. “He can hardly refuse to oblige us by going through the form of signing, so as to let us turn south at the river.”
“Very well,” said I, “St. Louis—yes.”
Out past the old Trescott farm, now covered with factories, cottages, and railway tracks, leaving Lynhurst Park off to our left, curving with the turnings of Brushy Creek Valley, through which our engineers had found such easy grades, dropping the straggling suburbs of the city behind us, we flew along the rails in the waning twilight of this grewsome day. On the windward windows and the roof rattled fierce flights of sleet and showers of cinders from the engine. Occasionally we felt the car sway in the howling gusts of wind, as we passed some opening in the hills and neared the more level prairie. Stories of cars blown from the rails flitted through my mind; and in contemplating such an accident my thoughts busied themselves with the details of plans for getting free from the wrecked car, and pushing on with the engine, the derailing of which somehow never occurred to me.
“We’re slowing down!” cried Jim, after a half-hour’s run. “I wonder what’s the matter!”
“For God’s sake, look ahead!” yelled Corcoran, leaping down from the cupola and springing to the door. We followed him to the platform, and each of us ran down on the step and, swinging out by the hand-rail, peered ahead into the dusk, the sleet stinging our cheeks like shot.
We were running along the right bank of the stream, at a point where the valley narrowed down to perhaps sixty rods of bottom. At the first dim look before us we could see nothing unusual, except that the background of the scene looked somehow as if lifted by a mirage. Then I noticed that up the valley, instead of the ghostly suggestions of trees and hills which bounded the vista in other directions, there was an appearance like that seen on looking out to sea.
“The flood!” said Jim. “He’s not going to stop, is he Corcoran?”
At this moment came at once the explanation of Schwartz’s hesitation and the answer to Jim’s question. We saw, reaching clear across the narrow bottom, a great wave of water, coming down the valley like a liquid wall, stretching across the track and seeming to forbid our further progress, while it advanced deliberately upon us, as if to drown engine and crew. Driven on by the terrific gale, it boiled at its base, and curled forward at its foamy and wind-whipped crest, as if the upper waters were impatient of the slow speed of those below. Beyond the wave, the valley, from bluff to bluff, was a sea, rolling white-capped waves. Logs, planks, and the other flotsam of a freshet moved on in the van of the flood.
It looked like the end of our run. What engineer would dare to dash on at such speed over a submerged track—possibly floated from its bed, possibly barricaded by driftwood? Was not the wave high enough to put out the fires and kill the engine? As we met the roaring eagre we felt the engine leap, as Schwartz’shesitation left him and he opened the throttle. Like knight tilting against knight, wave and engine met. There was a hissing as of the plunging of a great red-hot bar into a vat. A roaring sheet of water, thrown into the air by our momentum, washed cab and tender and car, as a billow pours over a laboring ship; and we stood on the steps, drenched to the skin, the water swirling about our ankles as we rushed forward. Then we heard the scream of triumph from the whistle, with which Schwartz cheered us as the dripping train ran on through shallower and shallower water, and turning, after a mile or so, began climbing, dry-shod, the grade which led from the flooded valley and out upon the uplands.
“Come in, Mr. Elkins,” said Corcoran. “You’ll both freeze out there, wet as you are.”
Not until I heard this did I realize that we were still standing on the steps, our clothes congealing about us, peering through the now dense gloom ahead, as if for the apparition of some other grisly foe to daunt or drive us back.
We went in, and sat down by the roaring fire, in spite of which a chill pervaded the car. We were now running over the divide between the valley we had just left and that of Elk Fork. Up here on the highlands the wind more than ever roared and clutched at the corners of the car, and sometimes, as with the palm of a great hand, pressed us over, as if a giant were striving to overturn us. We could hear the engine struggling with the savage norther, like a runner breathing hard, as he nears exhaustion.Presently I noticed fine particles of snow, driven into the car at the crevices, falling on my hands and face, and striking the hot stove with little hissing explosions of steam.
“We’re running into a blizzard up here,” said Corcoran. “It’s a terror outside.”
“A terror; yes,” said Jim. “What sort of time are we making?”
“Just about holding our own,” said Corcoran. “Not much to spare. Got to stop at Barslow for water. But there won’t be any bad track from there on. This snow won’t cut any figure for three hours yet, and mebbe not at all, there’s so little of it.”
“Kittrick has been asking for an appropriation to rebuild the Elk Fork trestle,” said Jim. “Will it stand this flood?”
“Well,” said Corcoran, “if the water ain’t too high, and the ice don’t run too swift in the Fork, it’ll be all right. But if there’s any such mixture of downpour and thaw as there was along the Creek back there, we may have to jump across a gap. It’ll probably be all right.”
I remembered the Elk Fork, and the trestle just on the hither side of the Junction. I remembered the valley, green with trees, and populous with herds, winding down to the lake, and the pretty little town of Josephine. I remembered that gala day when we christened it. I groaned in spirit, as I thought of finding the trestle gone, after our hundred-and-fifty-mile dash through storm and flood. Yet I believed it would be gone. The blows showered upon us had beaten down my courage. I felt noshrinking from either struggle or danger; but this was merely the impulse which impels the soldier to fight on in despair, and sell his life dearly. I believed that ruin fronted us all; that our great system of enterprises was going down; that, East and West, where we had been so much courted and admired, we should become a by-word and a hissing. The elements were struggling against us. That vengeful flood had snatched at us, and barely missed; the ruthless hurricane was holding us back; and somehow fate would yet find means to lay us low. I had all day kept thinking of the lines:
“Nor ever yet had Arthur fought a fightLike this last dim, weird battle of the west.A death-white mist slept over land and sea:Whereof the chill, to him who breathed it, drewDown to his blood, till all his heat was coldWith formless fear: and even on Arthur fellConfusion, since he saw not whom he fought.”
And this, thought I, was the end of the undertaking upon which we had entered so lightly, with frolic jests of piracy and Spanish galleons and pieces-of-eight, and with all that mock-seriousness with which we discussed hypnotic suggestion and psychic force! The bitterness grew sickening, as Corcoran, hearing the long whistle of the engine, said that we were coming into Barslow. The tragic foolery of giving that name to any place!
Out upon the platform here, in the blinding whirl of snow. The night operator came out and talked to us of the news of the line, while the engine ran onto the tank for water. There was another telegram from Agnew, saying that the Pendleton special was on time, and that Mr. Kittrick was following us with another train “in case of need.”
The operator was full of wild stories of the Brushy Creek flood, caused by the thaw and the cloudburst. We cut him short in this narration, and asked him of the conditions along the Elk Fork.
“She’s up and boomin’,” said he. “The trestle was most all under water an hour ago, and they say the ice was runnin’ in blocks. You may find the track left without any underpinnin’. Look out for yourselves.”
“Al,” said Jim slowly, “can you fire an engine?”
“I guess so,” said I, seeing his meaning dimly. “Why?”
“Al,” said he, as if stating the conclusion of a complicated calculation, “we must run this train in alone!”
I saw his intent fully, and knew why he walked so resolutely up to the engine, now backed down to take us on again. Schwartz leaned out of his cab, a man of snow and ice. Ole stood with his shovel in his hand white and icy like his brother worker. Both had been drenched, as we had; but they had had no red-hot stove by which to sit; and buffeted by the blizzard and powdered by the snow, they had endured the benumbing cold of the hurricane-swept cab.
“Get down here, boys,” said Jim. “I want to talk with you.”
Ole leaped lightly down, followed by Schwartz,who hobbled laboriously, stiffened with cold. Youth and violent labor had kept the fireman warm.
“Schwartz,” said Jim, “there is a chance that we’ll find the trestle weakened and dangerous. We’ll stop and examine it if we have time, but if it is as close a thing as I think it will be, we propose to make a run for it and take chances. Barslow and I are the ones, and the only ones, who ought to do this, because we must make this connection. We can run the engine. You and Ole and Corcoran stay here. Mr. Kittrick will be along with another train in a few hours. Uncouple the caboose and we’ll run on.”
Schwartz blew his nose with great deliberation.
“Ole,” said he, “what d’ye think of the old man’s scheme?”
“Ay tank,” said Ole, “dat bane hellufa notion!”
“Come,” said Mr. Elkins, “we’re losing time! Uncouple at once!”
We started to mount the engine; but Schwartz and Ole were before us, barring the way.
“Wait,” said Schwartz. “Jest look at it, now. It’s quite a run yet; and the chances are you’d have the cylinder-heads knocked out before you’d got half way; and then where’d you be with your connections?”
“Do you mean to say,” said Jim, “that there’s any likelihood of the engine’s dying on us between here and the Junction?”
“It’s a cinch!” said Schwartz.
“For God’s sake, then, let’s get on!” said Jim. “I believe you’re lying to me, Schwartz. But do this:As you come to the trestle, stop. From the approach we can see down the other track for ten miles. If Pendleton’s train is far enough off so as to give us time, we’ll see how the bridge is before we cross. If we’re pressed for time too much for this, promise me that you’ll stop and let us run the engine across alone.”
“I’ll think about it,” said Schwartz; “and if I conclude to, I will. It’s got to clear up, if we can see even the headlight on the other road very far. Ready, Jack?”
We wrung their hard and icy hands, leaped upon the train, and were away again, spinning down the grade toward the Elk Fork, and comforted by our speed. Jim and I climbed into the cupola and watched the track ahead, and the two homely heroes in the cab, as the light from the furnace blazed out upon them from time to time. Now we could see Schwartz stoking, to warm himself; now we could see him looking at his watch and peering anxiously out before him.
It was wearing on toward nine, and still our goal was miles away. Overhead the sky was clearing, and we could see the stars; but down on the ground the light, new snow still glided whitely along before the lessening wind. Once or twice we saw, or thought we saw, far ahead, lights, like those of a little prairie town. Was it the Junction? Yes, said Corcoran, when we called him to look; and now we saw that we were rising on the long approach to the trestle.
Would Schwartz stop, or would he run desperatelyacross, as he had dashed through the flood? That was with him. His hand was on the lever, and we were helpless; but, if there was time, it would be mere foolhardiness to go upon the trestle at any but the slowest speed, and without giving all but one an opportunity to walk across. One, surely, was enough to go down with the engine, if it, indeed, went down.
“Don’t stay up there,” shouted Corcoran, “go out on the steps so you can jump for it if you have to!”
Out upon the platform we went in the biting wind, which still came fiercely on, sweeping over the waste of waters which covered the fields like a great lake. There was no sign of slowing down: right on, as if the road were rock-ballasted, and thrice secure, the engine drove toward the trestle.
“She’s there, anyhow, I b’lieve,” said Corcoran, swinging out and looking ahead; “but I wouldn’t bet on how solid she is!”
“Can’t you stop him?” said Jim.
“Stop nothing!” said Corcoran. “Look over there!”
We looked, and saw a light gleaming mistily, but distinct and unmistakable, across the water on the other track. It was the Pendleton special! Not much further from the station than were we, the train of moving palaces to which we were fighting our way was gliding to the point beyond which it must not pass without us. There was now no more thought of stopping; rather our desires yearned forward over the course, agonizing for greater speed. I did not see that we were actually upon the trestle until for some rods we had been running with theinky water only a few feet below us; but when I saw it my hopes leaped up, as I calculated the proportion of the peril which was passed. A moment more, and the solid approach would be under our spinning wheels.
But the moment more was not to be given us! For, even as this joy rose in my breast, I felt a shock; I heard a confused sound of men’s cries, and the shattering of timbers; the caboose whirled over cornerwise, throwing up into the air the step on which I stood; the sounds of the train went out in sudden silence as engine and car plunged off into the stream; and I felt the cold water close over me as I fell into the rushing flood. I arose and struck out for the shore; then I thought of Jim. A few feet above me in the stream I saw something like a hand or foot flung up out of the water, and sucked down again. I turned as well as I could toward the spot, and collided with some object under the surface. I caught at it, felt the skirt of a garment in my hand, and knew it for a man. Then, I remember helping myself with a plank from some washed-out bridge, and soon felt the ground under my feet, all the time clinging to my man. I tried to lift him out, but could not; and I locked my hands under his arm-pits and, slowly stepping backwards, I half carried, half dragged him, seeking a place where I could lay him down. I saw the dark line of the railroad grade, and made wearily toward it. I walked blindly into the water of the ditch beside the track, and had scarcely strength to pull myself and my burden out upon the bank. Then I stopped and peered into his face,and saw uncertainly that it was Jim—with a dark spot in the edge of the hair on his forehead, from which black streaks kept stealing down as I wiped them off; and with one arm which twisted unnaturally, and with a grating sound as I moved it; and from whom there came no other sound or movement whatever.
And over across the stream gleamed the lights of the Pendleton special as it sped away toward Chicago.