Less than a mile down the track, Prince came to the tiny signal house for which he had been looking. The door was locked, and so numb and clumsy were his fingers that he found it hard to force it open. Once on the inside, he felt that the struggle was nearly over. This was the end. Using the railway's private phone, he astonished the telegraph operator in Fort Morgan by cutting in on him and asking him to run across to the nearest garage with a call for a service car.
For a long moment the operator was speechless. Did you ever hear of insolence like that? He told Prince to get off that wire and keep his hands away from railway property or he would land in the pen. Then he went back to his work. But Prince cut in on him again. Finally the operator referred him to the station master and gave him the connection. But the station master refused to meddle with any such irregular business. This was against the law, and station masters are strong for law and order. But Prince was persistent. At last, in despair, they connected him with the district superintendent.
"Who in thunder are you, and what do you want?" asked the superintendent in no gentle voice.
"I want some of those sap-heads of yours in Fort Morgan to take a message to the garage, and they won't do it," yelled Prince.
"Say, what do you think this is? A philanthropic messenger service?" ejaculated the superintendent.
"I haven't got time to talk," cried Prince. "I've got to get at a garage, and quickly."
"Well, we don't run a garage."
"Shut up a minute and listen, will you? There is a woman out here on the track, half frozen. We are twenty miles from a house. Will you send that message or not? The woman can't live two hours."
"Well, why didn't you tell what was the matter? I will connect you with the operator at Fort Morgan and tell him to do whatever you say. You stay on the wire until he reports they have a car started."
So Prince was flung back to the operator at Fort Morgan, and that high-souled scion of the railway was sent out like a common delivery boy to take a message. Prince waited in an agony of suspense for the report from the garage. It was not favorable. No man in town would go out on a wild goose chase into the plains on a night like that. Awfully sorry, nothing doing.
"Take a gun and make them come," said Prince, between set teeth.
"I'm not looking for trouble. Your woman would freeze before they got there anyhow."
"Send the sheriff," begged Prince.
"He couldn't get out there a night like this in time to do you any good."
This was literally true. For a second Prince was silent.
"Anything else?" asked the operator. "Want me to run out and get you a cigar, or a bottle of perfume, or anything?"
"Then there is just one thing to do," said Prince abruptly. "I'll have to flag the first train and get her aboard."
"What! You can't do it. You don't dare do it. It is against the law to flag a train on private business."
"I know it. So I am asking you to make it the railroad's business. I am warning you in advance. Where are the fuses?"
The operator helplessly called up the superintendent once more.
"What the dickens do you want now?"
"It's that nut on the line," explained the operator. "He wants something else."
"Yes, I want to know where the fuses are so I can flag the first train that comes. Or I will just set the tool house afire; that will stop them."
"The fuses are in the lock box under the phone. Break the lock, or pick it. Let us know if you get in all right. How the dickens did you get a woman out there a night like this?"
But Prince had no time to explain. "Thanks, old man, you're pretty white," he said, and clasped the receiver on to the hook. A little later, with the precious fuses in his pocket, he was fighting his way through the snow back to Connie, lying unconscious in the white blankets which no longer chilled her.
The waiting seemed endlessly weary. Prince dared not sit down, but must needs keep staggering up and down the track, praying as he had never prayed in all his life, that God would send a train before Connie should freeze to death. Stooping over her, he chafed her hands and ankles, shaking her roughly, but never succeeding in restoring her to consciousness though doubtless he did much toward keeping the blood in feeble circulation.
Then, thank God! No heavenly star ever shone half so gloriously bright as that wide sweep of light that circled around the ragged rocks. Prince hastily fired the fuse, and a few minutes later a lumbering freight train pulled up beside him, anxious voices calling inquiry.
With rough but willing hands they pulled the girl on board, and piled heavy coats on a bench beside the fire where she might lie, and brought out some hot coffee which Prince swallowed in deep gulps. They even forced a few drops of it down Connie's throat. Prince was soon himself again, and sat silently beside Connie as she slept the heavy sleep.
A long lumbering ride it was, the cars creaking and rocking, reeling from side to side as if they too were drunk with weariness and cold.
At last Connie moved a little and lifted her lashes. She lay very still a while, looking with puzzled eyes at her strange surroundings, enjoying the huge fire, wondering at that curious rocking. Then, glancing at the big brown head beside her, where Prince sat on an overturned bucket with her hand in his, she closed her eyes again, still puzzled, but content.
Long minutes afterward she spoke.
"Are you cold, Prince?"
He tightened his clasp on her hand.
"No."
"How did you ever make it?"
"The train came along and we got on. Now we are thawing out," he explained, smiling reassurance.
"I do not remember it. I only remember that I was stuck in the snow, and that you did not leave me."
"Here comes some more coffee, lady," said the brakeman, coming up. Connie drank it gratefully and sat up.
"Where are we going?"
"To Fort Morgan."
"Want any more blankets or anything?" asked the brakeman kindly. "Are you getting warm?"
"Too warm, I will have to move a little."
Prince helped her gently farther from the roaring flames, and again pulled his bucket close to her side. He placed his hand in her lap and Connie wriggled her fingers into his.
Suddenly she leaned forward and looked into his face, noting the steady steely eyes, the square strong chin, the boyish mouth. Not a handsome face, like Jerry's, not fine and pure, like David's,—but strong and kind, a face that somehow spoke wistfully of deep needs and secret longings. Suddenly Connie felt that she was very happy, and in the same instant discovered that her eyes were wet. She smiled.
"Connie," whispered the big brown man, "are we going to get married, sometime?"
"Yes," she whispered promptly, "sometime. If you want me."
His hands closed convulsively over hers.
"Make it soon," he begged. "It is terribly lonesome."
"Two years," she suggested, wrinkling her brows. "But if it is too lonesome, we will make it one."
"You won't go away." Prince was aghast at the thought.
"I have to," she told him, caressing his hand with her fingers. "You know I believe I have a talent, and it says in the Bible if you do not use what is given you, all the other nice things you have may be taken away. So if I don't use that talent, I may lose it and you into the bargain."
Prince did not understand that, but it sounded reasonable. Whatever Connie said, of course. She had a talent, all right, a dozen,—a hundred of them. He thought she had a monopoly on talents.
"I will go back a while and study and work and get ready to use the talent. I have to finish getting ready first. Then I will come and live with you and you can help me use it. You won't mind, will you?"
"I want you to use it," he said. "I'm proud of it. I will take you wherever you wish to go, I will do whatever you want. I'll get a home in Denver, and just manage the business from the outside. I can live the way you like to live and do the things you like to have done; Connie, I know I can."
Connie reached slowly for her hand-bag. From it she took a tiny note-book and tossed it in the fire.
"Literary material," she explained, smiting at him. "I can not write what I have learned in Fort Morgan. I can only live it."
After Connie's visit, when she had returned to Chicago to finish learning how to write her knowledge, David and Carol with little Julia settled down in the cottage among the pines, and the winter came and the mountains were huge white monuments over the last summer that had died. Later in the winter a nurse came in to take charge of the little family, and although Carol was afraid of her, she obeyed with childish confidence whenever the nurse gave directions.
"I feel fine to-day," David said to her one morning. "I think when spring comes I shall be stronger again. It is a good thing to be alive."
He glanced through the window and looked at Carol, buttoning Julia's gaiters for the fifth time that morning.
"It is a pretty nice world to most of us," said the nurse.
"We each have a world of our own, I guess. Mine is Carol and Julia now. I have no grouch at life, and I register no complaint against circumstances, but I should be glad to live in my little world a long, long time."
One morning when spring had come, when the white monuments melted and drifted away with the clouds, and when the shadowy canyons and the yellow rocky peaks stood out bare and bright, David called her to him.
"Look," he said, "the same old sunny slope. We have been climbing it four years now, a long climb, sometimes pretty rough and rugged for you."
"It was not, David,—never," she protested quickly. "It was always a clear bright path. And we've been finding things to laugh at all the way."
He pulled her into his arm beside him on the bed. "We are going to the top of the sunny slope together. Look at the mountain there. We are going up one of those sunny ridges, and sometime, after a while, we will stand at the top, right on the summit, with the sky above and the valleys below."
She nodded her head, smiling at him bravely.
"I think it is probably very near to Heaven," he said slowly, in a dreamy voice. "I think it must be. It is so intensely bright,—see how it cuts into the blue. Yes, it must be right at the gates of Heaven. We will stand right there together, won't we?"
"David," she whispered.
"This is what I want to say. After that, there will be another way for you to go, on the other side. Look at the mountains, dear. See, there are other peaks beyond, with alternating slopes of sunshine and canyons of shadow. It is much easier to stick to the sunny slopes when there are two together. It is very easy to stagger off into the shadows, when one has to travel alone. But, Carol, don't you go into the shadows. I want to think always that you are staying in the sunshine, on the slopes, where it is bright, where Julia can laugh and play, where you can sing and listen to the birds. Stick to the sunny slopes, dear, even when you are climbing alone."
Carol nodded her head in affirmation, though her face was hidden.
"I will, David. I will run right out of the shadows and find the sunny slopes."
"And do not try to live by, 'what would David like?' Be happy, dear. Follow the sunshine. I think it guides us truly, for a pure kind heart can not mistake fleeting gaiety for lasting joys like you and I have had. So wherever your journey of joy may take you, follow it and be assured that I am smiling at you in the sunshine."
Carol stayed with him after that, sitting very quietly, speaking softly, in the subdued way that had developed from her youthful buoyance, always quick to smile reassuringly and adoringly when he looked at her, always ready to look hopefully to the sunny slopes when his finger pointed.
In a low hammock beneath the maples Carol lay, pale and slender, dressed in a soft gown of creamy white, with a pink rose at her belt. Through an open window she could see her father at his desk up-stairs. Often he came to the window, waving a friendly greeting that told how glad he was to have her in the family home again. And she could see Aunt Grace in the kitchen, energetically whipping cream for the apple pie for dinner—"Carol always did love apple pie with whipped cream." Julia was digging a canal through the flower bed a dozen steps away. And close at her side sat Lark, the sweet, old, precious twin, who could not attend to the farm a single minute now that Carol was at home once more.
Carol's hands were clasped under her head, and she was staring up through the trees at the clear blue sky, flecked like a sea with bits of foam.
"Mother," cried Julia, running to the hammock and sweeping wildly at the sky with a knife she was using for a spade, "I looked right up into Heaven and I saw my daddy, and he did not cough a bit. He smiled at me and said, 'Hello, little sweetheart. Take good care of Mother.'"
Carol kissed her, softly, regardless of the streaks of earth upon her chubby face.
"Mother," puzzled Julia, "what is it to be died? I can't think it. And I lie down and I can't do it. What is it to be died?"
"Death, Julia, you mean death. I think, dear, it is life,—life that is all made straight; life where one can work and never be laid aside for illness; life where one can love, and fear no separation; life where one can do the big things he yearned to do, and be the big man he yearned to be with no hindrance of little petty things. I think that death is life, the happy life."
Julia, satisfied, returned to her canal, and Lark, with throbbing pity, patted Carol's arm.
"Do you know, Larkie, I think that death is life on the top of a sunny slope, clear up on the peak where it touches the sky. Such a big sunny slope that the canyons of shadow are miles and miles away, out of sight entirely. I believe that David is living right along on the top of a sunny slope."
Her father stepped to the window and tapped on the pane, waving down to them. "I can't keep away from this window," he called. "Whenever you twins get together I think I have to watch you just as I used to when you were mobbing the parsonage."
The twins laughed, and when he went back to his desk they turned to each other with eyes that plainly said, "Isn't he the grandest father that ever lived?"
Then Carol folded her hands behind her head again and looked dreamily up through the leafy maples, seeing the broad mesa stretching off miles away to the mountains, where the dark canyons underlined the sunny slopes.