Charley, who had learned the useful lesson of swift obedience, loosed his hold, and struggled for a few moments to rein in his horse; then, trembling with excitement, watched the sleigh charge on down the slope towards the river. He knew Arthur was trusting that the pace they travelled at would carry them across before the ice broke through. He watched the sleigh shoot out from the bank, then there was a sharp crackle, and he caught his breath as Arthur's floundering horse disappeared from view. It had struck a weaker place, or stumbled, and the treacherous slippery covering had yielded beneath it. But his brother, flinging himself from the saddle, had already clutched the sleigh, and Charley shouted with relief when he saw him stand up in it grasping the reins, while a few seconds later the team crashed through the willows by the water's edge on the farther side, and drew clear of the dangerous ice. Charley felt almost dizzy now the crisis had passed, for he knew the horses could not run away up the opposite slope.
Then the snow thickened, there was a roaring among the branches, and the daylight went out, while when he reached the river he could hardly see the hole in the ice under which the current had doubtless sucked the unfortunate horse. He crossed by the bridge, but the whole air was filled with driving snow, while broken twigs were hurled about him by the sudden gale, and when he reached the level there was only thick whirling whiteness ahead. It filled his eyes and nostrils, deadened his hearing, and almost took his breath away; he could not even see the trees, and let the horse go its own way until it nearly walked into what looked like a white bear and was a man on foot. By the voice he recognised Colonel Armadale's companion, who shouted——
"Where is the team that ran away? We could see you from a distance."
"I don't know," said Charley. "Haven't seen them for ten minutes. More to the right, I think;" and the other, grasping his horse's bridle, said, "Come back, and tell him," while by-and-by they reached a sleigh in which an upright figure sat sheeted with snow. He guessed it must be Colonel Armadale.
Then the old man said, in a tone that seemed less sharp than usual, though the roar of the gale prevented the lad from hearing plainly, "You are young Gordon, are you not? My daughter would have been drowned long before we could have reached the ravine—we crossed before her somehow—but for your brother's good sense and gallantry. Not seen them since? It's hardly surprising. Let your horse go, and get into the sleigh. No, Lawrence—come back, d'you hear?"
The other man appeared to demur, saying something which sounded like, "I must try to find them, sir," but Colonel Armadale turned upon him angrily.
"Come back, you idiot!" he repeated. "Nobody could find them, and even if you could your extra weight would hamper them unnecessarily. Your brother should know the prairie well, eh, Gordon?"
"Yes, sir," said Charley, who felt bitter against the speaker for his rudeness to Arthur, "but I'm going straight home and won't get in."
"Get in at once!" said Colonel Armadale. "You would be frozen stiff long before you reached your home. Lily's team can find their own way to the stables; these western horses are like pigeons—that is, if your brother has the sense to let them. We can do nothing but trust our own to do the same, and it's considerably safer under the sleigh robes than it is in the saddle. Let them go, Lawrence. We have not a minute to lose."
Charley loosed his horse, which followed the sleigh; and then for what seemed ages the beasts blundered through a whirling cloud of snow that grew thicker and thicker, while the awful cold chilled the lad to the backbone. Still, he knew Colonel Armadale was right, and protected by the thick robes, he could just keep alive, though he would certainly have frozen in the saddle. But, at last, when he could hardly either speak or see, a dim brightness flickered ahead, voices hailed them, and he fell half-fainting over the threshold into the glare of a great fire that burned in the log-built hall of Barholm Grange. Someone who took his skin coat away brought him hot coffee and food, and when he had eaten and grown accustomed to the temperature, the grim, white-haired colonel made him sit beside the stove in a big hide-covered chair. Still, there was an unusually gentle look in his stern eyes now, and presently Charley, whose head was swimming, found him talking to him confidentially, until the colonel said abruptly, "So your brother was an officer—what made him start farming without capital on the prairie?"
Charley explained at some length as well as he could, and when he had finished the old man said, "H'm, I see. Well, he has been a good brother and done his duty to you. Never suspected he had so much in him, and that he held Her Majesty's Commission is news to me. At least, he is a courageous gentleman, and I am indebted to both of you."
After this he paced fiercely to and fro, while the icy wind howled about the building, shaking it until the logs it was made of trembled, and its wooden roofing shingles strained and clattered overhead. Thicker and thicker, with a heavy thudding the snow drove against the double windows, until it seemed that nothing living could escape destruction upon the open prairie. So presently Charley, who felt his strength returning, said——
"I can sit still no longer. You must please lend me a horse, sir, and I will go to look for them."
"Sit down again," answered the Colonel. "Ay, you have learned obedience. Do you think that if there was any small chance of finding them I would loiter here while my only daughter struggles in peril of her life somewhere out there in this awful snow? There are times, my lad, when the boldest man is helpless, and your brother's only hope is to trust the instinct given as a compensation to every dumb beast. No, we can only wait, and to wait with patience is considerably harder than doing risky things, as you will find some day."
After that the time passed very slowly, and the storm grew, if possible, fiercer, until somebody shouted, and they stood holding the great door open in the hall, and staring, with eyes that watered, into the maze of whirling drift outside. The snow blew along, fine as powder, in blinding clouds like smoke.
"Thank heaven!" said Colonel Armadale, as dim shapes, which might have been either beasts or men, loomed out through the whiteness. He ran forward holding up a lantern, Charley followed, and was immediately blown headlong into a drift, while when he scrambled out of it Arthur staggered past. He was crusted with the wind-packed powder into a formless object, and reeled blindly into the hall with a burden, which afterwards transpired to be Lilian Armadale, who had fainted in his arms. Then Charley slipped out of the way, for everyone was busy doing something for the two nearly frozen travellers, while, when Arthur appeared later in borrowed garments, Colonel Armadale met him with outstretched hands.
"You have done me a great service—a service I can never repay; and you are very welcome to Barholme," he said. "We must try to be better friends than we have been—in the future."
Charley thought the last words hardly explained the position, for he considered that nobody could have called Colonel Armadale's previous conduct friendly at all, but he was glad when his brother took the outstretched hand, for the older man's lips trembled under his long moustache. Then he was led into a snug matchboarded room, and sank into a deep sleep which lasted ten hours on end. They stayed at the Grange all the next day, and Arthur afterwards told Charley that Miss Armadale would have spoiled him altogether had he stayed any longer; then, after a friendly parting with the colonel, they rode home again, while as their horses picked their way through the drifts Arthur said, "Charley, I am afraid I have given way to foolish pride. Colonel Armadale wanted to pay me for the horse I lost, and I would not let him. It was worse than foolish, when we have Alice and Reggie to think of, and have lost all the crop."
"I am glad you did it," said the lad, flinging back his head. "It would look too much like being paid for kindness, and even if we are poor I couldn't have taken the money." Then he sighed, for he noticed his brother's face grew care-worn, and guessed that the thought of the coming year troubled him. But Arthur only said, half-aloud, "It was foolish; I had no right to refuse. Still, bad luck can't last for ever, and it may all come right some day."
It was late when they reached their own homestead, which rose up, a few snow-backed mounds out of the prairie, looking very mean and small after the fine buildings of Barholm Grange. Charley told Alice what had happened, but she said nothing, though she glanced at her elder brother sympathetically. He also told Peter, adding, "I think the Colonel is a much nicer man than he looks, when one gets to know him."
"That's as may be," answered old Peter, with a twinkle in his eye. "Nathless, he's seldom over civil, an' is just filled with stiff-necked pride. Ye'll mark that kind o' spirit prepares its own humbling. Do ye mind what happened when I first trained ye an' ye would not sweep the stable? Ay, ye were vain as ony peacock then. Fine white hands like a young lady's ye had. Noo, there's a faint promise that some day we may make ye intil a man."
But Charley laughed good-humouredly, and flinging a broom at him by way of playful compliment, ran out suddenly. He had already realised that Peter had taught him many things worth knowing, and he had discovered in Canada that it is much better to be able to do useful work than live daintily at somebody else's expense. He had seen a few rich men in the Dominion, who financed railroads and owned great flour mills, but could nevertheless hew a building log, or carry a grain bag, as well as any of their labourers. Arthur said, "Men like these are the backbone which stiffens the country."
A year passed, and Charley, who grew into a tall young man, had grown to love the prairie. He had also learned to mend his own clothes with pieces of cotton flour-bags, cook, and sweep out their rooms when his sister Alice was busy, besides many other things he used foolishly to think beneath him; and there was but one check to his contentment—they had lost another crop. Again autumn frost followed a dry season, and all that was left of the wheat was not worth thrashing. But they sowed another, which promised well, and so one summer day Arthur and he rode home from Barholm Grange with lighter hearts than they had known for some time. Lilian had gone to England, but her father asked them to come and see him occasionally.
It was a clear bright day, though by-and-by a dimness spread across the sky and the wind grew colder, while the bleached buffalo bones, which are still sprinkled across the prairie, seemed to shine out curiously white among the grasses. Only a little while ago the huge beasts traversed the great plains in countless thousands, but there is not a single wild one left to-day.
"I'm afraid there's a hailstorm not far away," said Arthur. "We'll ride into yonder bluff for shelter."
They went on at a gallop, and it grew nearly dark before they reached the little wood while the horses trembled when Charley tied them to a tree.
Then for some minutes there was a deep and very solemn stillness, during which Charley fancied that the air was filled with sulphur, while the skin of his head prickled. This lasted until a blaze of blue fire seemed to fall from the heavens, and flood all the prairie. It was followed by a deafening peal of thunder. Next moment the birches swayed suddenly sideways and some, tough as they were, snapped short off. Charley was forced to drive his heels into the mould to hold his place while the wood was filling with falling leaves, and the scream of the blast. Hailstones the size of marbles, and some of them even larger, came hurtling like grape-shot between the trees, and rattled upon the waggon, into which they bounced in bucketsful. The horses reared upright as the bending branches lashed them, and when, fearing that they would bolt and smash the waggon, he tried to hold them, Charley's hands bled under the thrashing of the ragged ice. It is fortunate that we never see such hail in this country.
Then the storm ceased as suddenly as it came, the wind grew still, the sun shone out hot and bright again, and when they rode out from the bluff the grasses were steaming. Only a cloud arch travelling south to spread ruin before it, and the wrecked branches in the wood told what had happened. The brothers were, however, very silent during the rest of the journey, and when they reached their farm towards the close of the afternoon they found Alice waiting for them with tears upon her cheeks, and her eyelids reddened. She had not been crying needlessly, for Alice was a light-hearted girl, and Arthur's face changed colour as he looked at the corn. Nothing remained of the tall wheat which was to feed them that winter but shattered blades, beaten into ribands and half-buried in the muddy ground.
"Is it quite ruined?" asked Charley huskily; and Arthur sighed as making a strong effort he answered calmly—"Quite! We must shut up the house, give up the farm, and look for work with the horses and oxen on the new railway. Still, we won't despair while we have health and strength left. We are not beaten yet, and if we can earn the money, must try again next year."
Then there was a world of sympathy in Charley's voice, though all he could find to say was—"Poor old Arthur!"
No one spoke much that evening, for their hearts were heavy, and Charley, who realised he might never live in it again, thought how snug and homely the little log-building was, and with what hopes he had helped to raise it. But he forgot his troubles in sleep, and though Arthur wandered about the prairie the whole night through, they rode out early next morning to the new railway some forty miles distant. There a fresh disappointment awaited them, for the engineer in charge said—
"We have got all the teams we want here, but I like the look of you, and I could send you timber-hewing on another branch line we are building in British Columbia. Our silly men have all started in to make their fortune gold mining there. I'll give you a note to the road surveyor, and free passes, and I dare say he'll let you a contract you can make something out of."
Arthur thought hard for several minutes, for British Columbia was several hundred miles away, before he answered—
"It's not what I hoped for, but as I have lost my crop, and can't sit here and wait until we're ruined we will thankfully accept your offer."
The engineer gave them a letter, and when they rode home again it was arranged that Alice should stay with Colonel Armadale, while, after dividing the cattle among their neighbours, the three brothers started, with their working beasts on board a big freight train for the mountains of British Columbia. It was a sorrowful parting, but Arthur said—"Poor people must expect unpleasant things, and can't afford to be particular. We must make an effort to help ourselves, and look forward to meeting again."
So in due time they reached the new railway, which led from the main line to a rich mining district among the mountains, and the surveyor in charge of it looked at them with approval. He thought he could tell good men when he saw them.
"Yes, you can have a contract to cut timber and haul it in for building snow-sheds," he said. "But we don't pay until the work's finished, and you take all risks. We haven't any use for the men who when they strike a run of bad luck just grumble and lie down, or throw up their contract."
"What I start I'll finish," said Arthur grimly; and the surveyor nodded as he answered—
"Glad to hear it; I hope you will. You'll find us treat you fairly if you do. We keep our dollars for good men and a big club for loafers."
So Arthur made a bargain with the railroad officials, and, pitching tents on the hillside, the brothers commenced their work. The line ran through a deep valley among majestic snow-crested mountains, with forests of stately pine trees rolling down their sides, and a river thundering in a gorge below. This was an awful chasm with sheer walls of rock which shut off each ray of sunlight from the foaming water in the dim abyss, and the railway was partly scooped out and partly built against the side of the tremendous precipice in a way which engineers call underpinning. Several men had lost their lives in doing it, for it was dangerous work. Now in that country great masses of sun-softened snow come rushing down the mountain sides every now and then, smashing the forests before them, and in order to prevent the railway from being swept away it was necessary to roof that portion in with a heavy timber building called a snow-shed, so that any avalanche might slide over the top of it. And it was the brothers' work to hew the great redwood logs into shape for this.
They were giant trees. There are few in the world bigger, and it was hard work felling them, and even harder to drag them along on rollers with oxen until they rushed crashing down a slide paved with timber to the railway. This slide took the brothers nearly three weeks to build. But they worked from dawn until after sunset, swinging the heavy axe, or pulling a seven-foot saw through the trunks, until they could hardly straighten their backs, though as the weeks went by Arthur grew more cheerful, for he hoped they would earn enough by the time the work was finished to sow another crop next year. Then one day part of the hillside slipped away, as it sometimes did, and there was only a great hollow where their log-side had been, while much of the hewn timber was buried under hundreds of tons of earth. Some men would have abandoned the task in despair, but Arthur had taught his brothers to believe that patient determination generally wins in the end. So when the surveyor came to inspect the ruin he met him calmly.
"I am sorry for you; you'll have to build a new slide, and hauling your logs round to it will cost you double. What are you going to do?" asked the railway builder, and Arthur answered—
"Cut a new road through the forest. Go on, and finish my contract, whatever it costs me. I'll hire more men and oxen if my own are not enough. You need not be afraid that I will fail you."
The surveyer said no more just then, though he wrote a letter to the railway offices, in which, after telling the story, he said—"The timber cutter for this section is a very honest man, and on opportunity I'll give him a better contract. He doesn't know when he is beaten, though he has had the worst kind of luck."
So Arthur sold the last of his cattle, hired some of his neighbours whose crops had also been destroyed by hail, and worked even harder than before, while he bade Charley, who managed the cooking, cut down their grocery bill. Yet, though they had to drag the logs twice as far, they had always the particular hewn timber they had contracted to deliver ready for the snow-sheds and trestle bridges, and the railway lengthened rapidly, while the inhabitants of the mining town sometimes rode out to inspect the new road which would bring them prosperity, and having heard the story, said that the brothers had "real hard grit" in them. Then it happened that one hot night when Arthur and Charley had ridden up on a locomotive to the blacksmith's shop near another construction camp some distance away, where they slept in a tent, they were awakened by a low rumbling. It sounded like thunder rolling high up among the stars, and then was answered by a deeper reverberation lower down along the shoulder of the hills Charley sat up shivering in the cold wind which whistled past the tent, and looking out across the deep dark valley could see the moonlight glimmering on the white line of eternal snow far above, and wreaths of silver mist slowly drifting across the pines. There was no sign of any danger, and yet that deep rumbling which ceased again seemed awe-inspiring and made him anxious. Then, as following Arthur's example he scrambled into his clothes, a grizzled hunter they sometimes bought venison from strode hurriedly out of the shadows.
"I guess there's somethin' coming which will badly bust your railroad up," he said. "The big ice rib which holds back the snow-field has been meltin' fast. Now she's busted bad, an' before morning the snow's comin' down. You heard the beginning of it, but there's lots more where that come from. I was up on the peaks after cinnamon bears when I seen the warnin,' an' just lit out just as quick as I could. It will be a snow-slide of the biggest, baddest kind, and I didn't think it would be healthy to get in its way."
"Where will the worst come?" asked Arthur; and the man answered—
"Right down the hollow where you're buildin' the long snow-shed I should figure. Anyhow, it's goin' to be dangerous at that end of the valley, an' I'm stoppin' right up here. You can't run up against a snow slide without getting hurt by it."
"Charley," said Arthur, with hoarse anxiety in his voice, "the lower end of the snow shed is waiting ready framed for the roof, and the logs we hewed for it are cut and loaded on the cars. If the snow-slide destroyed them we should have to cut others instead, which would ruin us altogether, and, as it is, we shall hardly make anything on the contract. Besides that, this part of the railway on which so many lives and so much money has been spent would be swept down over the precipice into the river."
"We must try to save it," broke in Charley, and Arthur continued—
"We are going to, or at least do our very utmost. Remember, it's our farm and home we are fighting for. Come on; we'll find some men to help us in the construction camp, and perhaps before the snow reaches it the shed will be finished. You have got to work as you never worked before, to-night."
They started, running their hardest, and sometimes stumbling over the loose ballast among the sleepers. It rolled and slipped away beneath their feet. Charley felt as though his lungs would burst, while the perspiration which ran into his eyes nearly blinded him, for here the line, curving, wound up a long ascent. But, remembering what depended upon their success, he clenched his hands, and held on stubbornly, passing his brother on the way, until at last, panting and breathless, they reached the tents beside a new bridge, to which most of the workmen had been sent from the snow-sheds. A great American locomotive, built to climb steep mountain lines, was waiting with banked fires before a row of ballast trucks, and when they had wakened the sleepers, there was a murmur of excited questions as Arthur told his story. Some of the men held small contracts on the railway, and if the line were destroyed would lose their work; the rest had been unfortunate miners and cattle raisers, but all alike were fearless, staunch, and sturdy, so when Arthur Gordon had finished speaking, one of them said—
"The engineer has gone down to the settlement, and the surveyor's busy at the other end of the track. Guess we'll have to get there, and see this through without him ourselves. Hold on a few minutes; we're all coming along to do what we can."
Arthur climbed on to the big locomotive—he had learned how to drive one—and Charley, at his bidding, thrust pine logs into the furnace. Then several men crowded into the glass-windowed shelter called the cab, and there was a hail from the trucks—"We're all aboard, and ready. Let her go her hardest."
Arthur shoved down the lever, Charley crammed still more fuel into the twinkling furnace, and with a blast from her funnel and a whirr of wheels slipping on dew-wet metals, the great mountain locomotive, which was, perhaps, twice the size of an English express engine, started on a grim race to beat the avalanche. The line led winding down from the snow-barred pass into the valley most of the way, and when Arthur, who felt the machinery warm up beneath him and knew he had no time to lose, turned full steam on, the ballast cars commenced to swing and bounce behind.
"THE GREAT MOUNTAIN LOCOMOTIVE STARTED ON A GRIM RACE TO BEAT THE AVALANCHE.""THE GREAT MOUNTAIN LOCOMOTIVE STARTEDON A GRIM RACE TO BEAT THE AVALANCHE."
A few shouts rose up from them, through the eddying dust, as the men who filled them were flung against each other before they could find hold for feet or hands to steady themselves with.
"You'll be spilling those fellows all over the track," said one of the men in the cab.
The footplates rocked under his feet, and Charley, who held on by a guard-rail, could see through the rattling glasses, the great pines come reeling towards them, an endless maze of flying trees, as the glare from the head-lamp—which is a huge lantern these engines carry—beat across them. They ceased to be separate trunks, for at that speed the eye could not grasp the spaces between them, and the whole forest wavered when, because the line was not well ballasted yet, the big locomotive swung to and fro.
Then bare rocks hung above their heads, and the roar of wheels, clash and clang of couplings, and beat of the great connecting-rods came back in one deafening din, while at times it seemed as if they were jumping clear of the metals, for Arthur, whose face grew set and grim, was racing the engine at a break-neck speed down the incline. Faster still grew the pace. There were more half-heard cries from the men in the lurching trucks behind, while Charley could see nothing at all now except the blaze of the head-lamp flickering through black darkness like a comet. But as they rushed with a crash and a rattle, vapour whirling about them, out of a snowshed, Arthur only said, "More steam!"—and a man helped Charley to throw fresh pinewood through the firebox door, from which a long red flame licked forth, so that before he could shut it his clothes were smouldering. Then someone said,
"We'll be on the trestle bridge in a minute. Say, did you forget? It's not finished yet, and they're mighty careful of it. Only run the cars over it slowly one or two at a time."
"Yes," said Arthur hoarsely, though he did not look round. "I forgot it. Hold tight; we would smash up everything if I tried to stop her now. We'll hope she carries speed enough to cross before the bridge can yield. There's nothing we can do but chance it. Raise more steam!"
Flying fragments of ballast whirled about the engine like driven hail, thick dust mixed with steam rushed past, and staring out beneath the massive branches that were blurred altogether in the head-lamp's glare, Charley saw the hillside fall apart into a great black hollow, and, clear in the moonlight that shone down here, the slender shape of a wooden bridge stretching across it. The structure looked very frail, a gossamer fabric giddily spanning the gloomy abyss. Then a great trembling commenced under the wheels, there was pitchy blackness with the roar of water below, and for a moment they seemed flying through mid air, while the rails heaved beneath them, and the men beside Charley held their breath. A strange coldness came upon him, and he wondered what it would feel like to plunge down into the river. Then someone shouted hoarsely, "We're over!"
Charley gasped with relief as he felt there was solid ground under them once more, while Arthur wiped the cold sweat from his forehead.
"We're almost there," said the latter, a few minutes later, as he shut off steam. The roar of wheels grew slacker, and presently, with a grinding of brakes, the engine drew up beside the cars loaded with hewn timber, in the partly-finished shed.
The Gordons had felled and squared most of that timber, and had not so far been paid for doing it; while Arthur knew that although the avalanche might smash to pieces a roofless shed, it would slide without causing much damage over the top of a completed one. He was, however, horribly afraid that the snow would come down on them before the work was done.
The logs were all sawn and notched to pattern, and numbered ready to be bolted to the frames, and as the men leapt down from the trucks, the foreman builder said—
"We've got to break up the record for quick erection to-night, boys, an' you'll show them folks in Crescent what you can do. Start in as if you meant it, an' we'll either break our backs or put this contract through."
Somebody lighted a roaring lucigen, which is a big air-blast lamp, and when a column of dazzling flame shot up, men swarmed like bees about the partly-finished shed. But there was little confusion, and less wild language, while no one got in his fellow's way. Each knew exactly where his duty lay, and did it thoroughly, which is the advantage of system and discipline, so while some raised the heavy beams, others fitted them, and as each slipped into place a man was ready to drive a bolt or holdfast through them. Arthur and Reggie drove the ox-teams which, by dragging a chain over a pulley, helped to raise the heavy weights, while Charley ran to and fro with his arms full of spikes or iron bolts, wherever the men called him. It was not a prominent part he took, but it was useful, and he had learned now, what he did not realise at school, that it did not matter whether people saw or heard of him, so long as he helped forward any necessary work he was interested in.
Then, amid a rattle of wheels, the surveyor came flying up the line on a hand trolley, and when Arthur had spoken with him, said—
"I saw your working light across the valley, and came in to see what was happening. I guess the Company is much indebted to you for your prompt measures. No, I don't think I can improve upon the programme. You are doing well. Let us hope the snow won't come, but if it does we'll be right there ready for it, and with good luck will have got on so far that it can't hurt us much."
That surveyor was a wise man, so he let well alone, instead of confusing the men and ordering things differently, merely because he had not arranged what they were doing all himself.
Charley had one narrow escape. He was standing on a box of spikes, which rested on a plank hung outside the shed, holding a long iron bolt, while a man who sat on a beam above him drove it into a hole, when there was a rattle beneath him and the box slipped away from his feet.
The precipice dropped steeply from the edge of the shed, but instead of feeling for the plank with his toes, he twined his knees round a log and still held the bolt, even before the workman said, "Stick tight to the iron, and don't let it go until I tell you."
It was not a comfortable perch, and the jar of the heavy hammer, which swung faster and faster, nearly shook his fingers from the bolt, but he held on stubbornly until the man, leaning down, grasped his shoulder saying, "Swing yourself up here beside me, sonny."
Charley did so, and when he sat on the beam in safety, felt himself turn cold and dizzy, for there was no sign of the plank, and he knew only the grip of his knees had saved him from following it into the awful chasm below.
"You're a level-headed youngster," said the workman, approvingly. "I said nothing for fear of scaring you, but if you'd thought more of taking care of yourself than you did of your job, an' had tried to drop on to that scaffold, you'd have been smashed flatter than a flapjack, way down in the cañon now."
At last the work was finished, and Charley, who had been puzzled by something strangely familiar in the face of a stripling who helped to fit the beams, stopped opposite him under the bright glare of the lucigen. Then like a flash his thoughts turned back to the day when their steamer crept slowly through the thick bank fog, and he remembered the white-faced lad waiting outside his dying comrade's room. The picture was so vivid that he almost fancied he could hear the throbbing of the steamer's crew.
"Tom," he said. "I hardly knew you—have you forgotten me?" And, after staring hard at him, the other's eyes brightened as he answered—
"Why, it's Mr. Gordon, whose brother jumped in after me. I am more than glad to see you."
Charley called out excitedly, and when Arthur came up the young man smiled with pleasure as Charley explained who he was. Afterwards, answering the many questions they asked him, he said—
"Yes, I'm Tom, the stowaway. The purser and Mr. Marvin—you will remember him—left me safe in Quebec with friends of theirs. They bought me an outfit—some kind people on the steamer had sent the money—sent me for a year to school, and afterwards set me learning to be a carpenter. Now I'm earning nearly two dollars a day, and this country is good enough for a poor man like me. Yes, you can make quite certain of that—and I'm only sorry poor Jim never lived to reach it. It was he who read those placards, and I can't forget him. No, I still dream of that collision, and sometimes at nights I can see him lying there so white and quiet in the steamer's hospital. 'There's plenty for us two yonder in that good country,' was the last he said. Then I hear the big engines humming. Curious, isn't it?—I can hear them now."
It was a strange meeting up there, after the stress and hurry, in the mountain wilderness, and there was a few moments' silence, while Charley wondered whether the half-starved urchin he met on board the steamer would ever have grown into this sturdy, contented young workman, if he had stayed at home. He hardly though it likely. Then Arthur said—
"I believe he is right about the sound, but it is the snow coming, not the steamer's screw."
A deep, trembling boom commenced and grew louder overhead, then with a hurried tramp of feet the men flocked towards the entrance of the shed, and the surveyor, overtaking Arthur, said—
"We'll have the snow-slide upon us presently, and I'm not quite certain what is best to do. Steam's down on the locomotive, we couldn't raise it in time, and I'm not sure if we could get clear before the wreckage swept the valley. Of course, it will come right down the hollow over the big glacier."
Charley, glancing upwards, saw a dark gap in the lofty line of eternal snow, which glimmered coldly high up under the stars, while the tall pines shivered as a great chorus of sound came vibrating down through the darkness. It drowned the hoarse fret of the river in the gorge below, grew louder and deeper, until the boldest of the workmen ceased their murmuring, and the forests in the valley were wrapped in listening silence while the great peaks spoke. It seemed to Charley's excited fancy it was some majestic chant they raised, for the hills on the further side flung back the sound, and it struck him there was a meaning in theBenedicitehe had never understood before. Winter frost that split the hard rock, summer sun, grinding ice, and melting snow, had each their work to do in enriching a good land and wearing down the face of the hills.
Neither was it ruin they wrought, for the wreckage they brought down would fertilize many a valley; and the rest, swept on by a mighty river, help to spread new wheat-lands west into what was then the sea. So Charley, too, felt humbled and awe-stricken, while, in obedience to everlasting laws which were older than the solid earth that trembled as it heard, the great voices of Nature proclaimed their message. Sometimes they speak in thunders, sometimes very softly, but they are never silent, and Charley, unheeding, had heard them in the sigh of the grasses which grew and died for centuries to add a few more inches of black soil to the prairie.
It was the surveyor who broke the silence—
"I guess, all things considered, we had better trust the shed," he said. "Timber-cutter Gordon, we'll test your work to-night, and if you've done it badly there'll be pretty few of us left in the morning to tell you so. Are you willing to take the chances?"
Arthur only bent his head.
"I am content. We tried to do our best," he said; and Charley, who now realised the necessity there is for doing everything well, felt thankful he had made each saw-cut, as Arthur ordered, on the exact centre of the line, even when that necessitated beginning once or twice over again. He looked at the shed, and it seemed solid and strong, a well-braced, dark tunnel, whose slanting roof was level with the top of the hewn-down rock behind. Meantime, through the great booming he could recognise sharper notes, the scream of mighty boulders scoring a pathway over slopes of rock, the roar of sliding gravel and the crash of shattered pines; until it seemed as if the whole mountain side were coming down upon them, and, as occasionally happens in that country, softened by melting snow and rent by alternate frost and thaw, a good deal of it really was. The men about him said nothing, until they murmured hoarsely when, staring up at the climbing forest, they saw its higher edge sink suddenly. Then under the misty moonlight a great wedge of white streaked with darker colour seemed to lick up the stately trees and roll downward irresistibly, leaving an empty gap behind it, where dense forest had been.
"I wonder how many thousand tons of snow and earth and broken rock there is in that," said the surveyor. "A tremendous display of power, and if one could only harness it we would need no more labour for the next few years. However, there's nobody smart enough to drive a snow-slide yet, and a wise man gets out of the way of it. It's time we crawled under cover, boys. Back into the shed!"
The men could scarcely hear his voice as they obeyed, for the whole air seemed throbbing with sound, and the earth shook, while Charley found it comforting to stand holding Reggie's hand close beside his elder brother under the strongest part of the snowshed. Tom also joined them, and when he said something in the latter's ear, Charley remembered it was not the first time the young carpenter and Arthur had watched together in the presence of death, before whom there is no difference between officer of the army and starving stowaway. Then their sense of hearing was completely paralysed, and it seemed to Charley that thousands of loaded trains were rolling over his head, while flakes of stone cracked off from the rock, and splinters peeled from the stout timbers as they bent inward a little under the pressure. In a very terrible manner the avalanche was proving the builders' work for them, and none of those who had toiled at it felt quite comfortable.
It would not have stood the strain a moment had not the shed been built on what is known as the line of least resistance. Nothing that man can make may withstand the primitive forces of the universe, though, after patient study of Nature's laws, which have remained the same since the framing of the earth, he may learn how to profit by obeying them. So, because the roof was sloped in such a way that the wreck of forest and glacier might pass over it without meeting any obstacle, it only shook and rattled beneath the burden.
Then, after a space of waiting, when the men's throats grew dry and their eyes bloodshot, the uproar died gradually away, and at last the surveyor said:
"You built it well, boys, and I'm mighty thankful you did. Now I think we can go out and look at the damage."
When Charley breathed the cool night air again, he could still hear masses of earth and rock plunging down into the ravine, and on looking up hardly believed his eyes, for as far as he could see a great strip of forest had been utterly blotted out. All that remained of it was a few broken and splintered stumps of trees. The rest had been ground into splinters.
"I must thank you again, Contractor Gordon, in the name of the Company," said the surveyor, "and I daresay somehow we will make it up to you. Hullo! wherever are you coming to?"
Tom sprang wildly forward, seized Arthur by the shoulder, and shouting "Stand clear!" hurled him backwards, while as they staggered and went down together, and the surveyor leaped aside for his life, Charley almost choked. With a crash against a broken pine, a great boulder, weighing several tons at least, came whirring down the slope, and passed so close that Charley felt the cold wind it made upon his face, then, striking the rails, it leaped out and vanished into the gorge below.
"TOM SPRANG WILDLY FORWARD AND SEIZED ARTHUR BY THE SHOULDER.""TOM SPRANG WILDLY FORWARD AND SEIZED ARTHURBY THE SHOULDER."
"Thanks!" said Arthur, helping up the panting lad. "Tom, I think we are even now, only that you might have hung on without my help to the wreck of the lifeboat, while that boulder would certainly have smashed me. As it was, it almost grazed us."
Then the last tinkle of sliding gravel died away, and there followed a deep silence, through which the fret of the river rose more angrily than before, and, throwing themselves down inside the shed by dozens, the men sank, one by one, into slumber. When Charley wakened the sun was high, and, taking Reggie with him, he went out to find Arthur talking to the surveyor.
"We'll have to re-roof part of the shed, but it has saved the track," said the latter, "and I should say this slide has done a good turn to you. You needn't haul logs from the mountain when the snow has brought them down with the bark and branches rubbed off nice and ready for you. Expect you'll find trees by the hundred lying round handy to save you chopping. You have only to pick them out and roll them in. We'll take all you can give us for the new bridges, after the sheds are finished."
Charley beamed with delight when he saw that this was true, for trunks of all sizes lay where the avalanche had passed, and in many places they had only to roll them a short distance with cant-poles to the rails. It meant a great saving of money.
"Yes, it should help us to make up part of what we have lost on the contract," said Arthur; "and I'm glad, because we badly need it."
Afterwards the work went on as before, except that they got their logs much more easily, until at last, one day in early winter, all the inhabitants of the mining town turned out to celebrate the coming of the first train.
Arthur and his brothers stood beside the metals near the last big bridge, the one they had crossed half-finished the eventful night the snows came down. Under the shadow of the scented cedars across the line a procession with flags and banners, which had marched out from the little wooden town, waited to meet the train. One or two men were reading over the speeches they hoped to make, and the rest chatted and laughed boisterously with their eyes turned towards the end of the valley, until an excited shout greeted a puff of white steam as something that twinkled in the sunlight swung round a distant curve. It was a locomotive hauling a passenger train, and it meant that there would no longer be any need to pay famine prices for all foods or stores, which had hitherto been brought in over the snow-choked passes and through thundering rivers by dangerous fords on pack-horses' backs. There were rich minerals in those mountains, and now the locomotive would bring them heavy mining machinery, everybody who lived there hoped the struggling town would grow into a great city.
Arthur Gordon said nothing as he watched the train draw near. He had toiled hard and spent his money freely helping to build that road, but he feared he would be very little richer for it, while how they were to live during the next year he did not know. He wore coarse blue jean, which, like Charley's clothes, was patched with strips of flour bags. In fact, the latter bore the brand, "Champion Early Riser," across his back. None of the brothers were light-hearted that bright morning, but, though they looked sober and serious, their eyes were fearless and they were not beaten yet. The years of work and disappointment had fashioned them into strong, determined men, who could be trusted to fight out even a losing battle bravely, which is not an easy thing to do. The train came on rapidly, then amid a burst of cheering it stopped opposite the brothers, and when a number of gentlemen came out upon the platform of the leading car, a citizen holding a paper stepped forward.
"We welcome this locomotive into Crescent City," he commenced. "Don't see no city? well, you haven't quite got there yet. No; I mean we welcome the honourable company, but we're glad to see both of you. This is going to be one of the greatest towns on earth, and—have patience gentlemen, I've lost my place—I'm proud to be its magistrate and own the smartest store. H'm!—oh, yes; you're introducing a new era of prosperity, and a railroad's the greatest institution of civilisation. The silly man has actually writ it—civility."
The reader stopped, and fumbled desperately with the paper, coughed, and grew red in the face, while a voice rose from the laughing crowd, "Out of breath so early? Forgotten all them pretty things. What about the Maple leaf an' the good old Beaver flag?"
"Gentlemen and fellow citizens—ladies and miners, I mean," recommenced the confused orator. "The Firtree doctor made up this here speech for me, and there was some nice idees in it, but he has written it that scribbly I can't read the thing. What I want to say is, I'm very glad you've come, and we've a feast up yonder waiting; you won't eat anything for a week after. We've made this town out of the barren wilderness, and now we've got a railroad we'll make it a city of palaces. There was some jealous people said we wanted a prison, but they was lying; it's schools, good men, and machines we want, and we mean to get them. I was taught with an ash plant, chiefly to single turnips, back in the old country, and that's why I can't express just what I'm feeling this auspicious day, but my sons won't be, and when we've more men with well crammed brains not ashamed to use their muscles, as the Almighty meant them to, we'll show the rest of the nations what we can do in this part of the Dominion. So, I've only to finish—drive on with your science an' engines, an' bring in prosperity."
Then, while some laughed and many cheered, the surveyor, who stood up among the rich men and railroad company's guests on the platform of the car, to the surprise of Charley, beckoned Arthur.
"This is Contractor Gordon," he said to a famous engineer. "You will remember I told you about him, and how he helped us to save part of the line."
"I am glad to meet you," said the engineer, holding out his hand to Arthur. "We are indebted to you, and should be pleased if you will ride into the town with us. I want to talk to you."
Charley also started when another grey-haired man touched his brother's shoulder, for he recognised Colonel Armadale. "I must congratulate you, too," he said. "We have heard several creditable things about you, and perhaps you did not know I was a large shareholder in this railway. We'll have to talk so much at dinner that you must answer the speeches for us now, Mr. Surveyor."
"I'm a railroad builder, and not a talker," said the surveyor as he faced the expectant crowd. "Talking's easy, railroad building's hard, and you folks should be proud because you've got a good one. Yes, we're going to bring you in prosperity, and, we hope, earn a few dividends, while you build your city, but when you all get rich don't forget the men who made this road. Some lost their money, and some their lives, you know. All fought hard, and you'll give them their due, so when you're raising statues to your mayors and presidents, don't forget a little one to the man with the big, hard hands who swings the shovel."
There was applause which swelled into a roar as a stalwart man in dusty blue jean stood up. "This country fed us well an' we done our little best to pay it back," he said. "It wasn't easy, but we worried through, and I'd like to mention one man to whom partickler thanks are due. He's standing right there beside the surveyor. He struck the hardest bad luck, but he didn't lie down an' die. No, sir; says he, 'What I've begun I'll finish,' an' he done it too. What's more, when any of the rest of us was nearly beat, he stood by an' helped us, helped us with axe an' ox-team, however he was busy. Gave us flour when the grub run out, an' good oats for the starvin' beasts when we couldn't buy no hay. Stand up, Arthur Gordon, we're all looking to you."
The air was filled with lifted hats and excited cries when Arthur Gordon leaned over the platform balustrade, laying a big hand that trembled on the brass rail, and Charley's eyes grew bright with pleasure when there was another roar from the assembly as the surveyor patted his shoulder. Arthur said little, and said it quietly, but it pleased the listeners, for there was a deafening cheer when he finished, and several of the principal guests shook hands with him. Then Charley's flushed face beamed as Tom who came up said, "Just splendid, wasn't it? I wish I had a brother like him. I knew he was going to be a great man ever since the day he jumped overboard to save me."
After this everybody scrambled for a place on the cars, and when, with the whistle screaming, the train moved on, those who could not find one ran behind it cheering towards the town, with Reggie waving his hat among them. When the latter turned back, he and Charley rode quietly home on a trolley to their shanty of cedar bark, while when Arthur returned at night he looked happy, and said he was very thankful.
"They have paid me more than we bargained for," he said—"made it up in a number of small extras; and there's another profitable contract open to me. I'm to go back to the other new railroad, near our homestead, and begin as soon as the frost goes. I'll want several dozen teams, and we should make a good deal out of it. Charley, you and Reggie must sow the crop yourselves next year; there is now no cause for anxiety, and if all goes as well as it promises to, I shall be able to start you by and by on Government land of your own."
Then Arthur took out some old letters, and when he sat down to write under the blinking lamp, Charley smiled at Reggie and they slipped out to join the workmen in camp.
"I think he wants to tell Miss Armadale about it, and won't miss us for once," said Charley.
They spent a happy winter in their own homestead, and when spring came Arthur hired all the men and teams he could on that part of the prairie, and went away to work on the new railroad, though he often rode forty miles to see how his brothers got on with the farm, and went back round by Barholm; while they reaped a very good crop that year. Bad fortune does not last for ever, and the men who succeed are those who can work on and wait patiently, for greater than dash and daring are the powers of slow endurance. Then Arthur brought a Government surveyor and laid out 160 acres of good land ready for Charley, who, with his younger brother, had been hewing logs for their house in the bluff. But before it was ready Arthur married Lilian Armadale, and they went to live in the old homestead, which had been doubled in size. It was Tom, the former stowaway, who took the contract for the carpentry.
So, after many disappointments and an up-hill struggle, the brothers found themselves on the way to prosperity, while when Charley, who is now a stalwart and successful young farmer, rides after his cattle across the prairie, or watches the fresh green wheat cover the ploughing, he looks back to those early days of adversity, and remembers he owes much to them. They had taught him useful lessons he might never have otherwise learned. Once, too, when he reaped his first splendid crop, his sister Alice, who kept house for him, said—
"You see, though sometimes I was afraid we should have to give it up, all happened for the best, and we should never have valued the good things if we got them too easily. Do you know, as I watched the binders pile up the sheaves, something recalled the last harvest-festival I was at in England, and I remember the message so well, 'They who sow in tears shall reap in joy.'"
"Alice is right," said Arthur, smiling at Lilian, who stood close beside him. "This is a good country, but even here one cannot win success and fortune—or a wife worth more than either—without a tough struggle. Still—and we are happier than many, for everybody does not get such prizes—it was well worth while."
THE END.
HEADLEY BROTHERS, PRINTERS, LONDON; AND ASHFORD, KENT.