The building of the Salmon River bridge will not soon be forgotten by engineers and men of science. But, while the technical features of the undertaking are familiar to a few, the general public knows little about how the work was actually done; and since the building of the bridge was the pivotal point in Murray O'Neil's career, it may be well to describe in some detail its various phases—the steps which led up to that day when the Salmon burst her bonds and put the result of all his planning and labor to the final test.
Nowhere else in the history of bridge-building had such conditions been encountered; nowhere on earth had work of this character been attended with greater hazards; never had circumstances created a situation of more dramatic interest. By many the whole venture was regarded as a reckless gamble; for more than a million dollars had been risked on the chance not alone that O'Neil could build supports which the ice could not demolish, but that he could build them under the most serious difficulties in record-breaking time. Far more than the mere cost of the structure hinged upon his success: failure would mean that his whole investment up to that point would be wiped out, to say nothing of the twenty-million-dollar project of a trunk-line up the valley of the Salmon.
Had the Government permitted the Kyak coal-fields to be opened up, the lower reaches of the S. R. & N. would have had a value, but all activity in that region had been throttled, and the policy of delay and indecision at headquarters promised no relief.
Careful as had been the plans, exhaustive and painstaking as had been the preparations, the bridge-builders met with unpreventable delays, disappointments, and disasters; for man is but a feeble creature whose brain tires and whose dreams are brittle. It is with these hindrances and accidents and with their effect upon the outcome that we have to deal.
Of course, the greatest handicap, the one ever-present obstacle, was the cold, and this made itself most troublesome in the sinking of the caissons and the building of the concrete piers. It was necessary, for instance, to house in all cement work, and to raise the temperature not only of the air surrounding it, but of the materials themselves before they were mixed and laid. Huge wind-breaks had to be built to protect the outside men from the gales that scoured the river-bed, and these were forever blowing down or suffering damage from the hurricanes. All this, however, had been anticipated: it was but the normal condition of work in the northland. And it was not until the middle of winter, shortly after Eliza's and Natalie's visit to the front, that an unexpected danger threatened, a danger more appalling than any upon which O'Neil and his assistants had reckoned.
In laying his plans Parker had proceeded upon the assumption that, once the cold had gripped the glaciers, they would remain motionless until spring. All available evidence went to prove the correctness of this supposition, but Alaska is a land of surprises, of contrasts, of contradictions: study of its phenomena is too recent to make practicable the laying down of hard and fast rules. In the midst of a season of cruelly low temperatures there came a thaw, unprecedented, inexplicable. A tremendous warm breath from the Pacific rolled northward, bathing the frozen plains and mountain ranges. Blizzards turned to rains and weeping fogs, the dry and shifting snow-fields melted, water ran in the courses. Winter loosed its hold; its mantle slipped. Nothing like this had ever been known or imagined. It was impossible! It was as if the unhallowed region were bent upon living up to its evil reputation. In a short time the loosened waters that trickled through the sleeping ice-fields greased the foundations upon which they lay. Jackson Glacier roused itself, then began to glide forward like a ship upon its ways. First there came the usual premonitory explosions—the sound of subterranean blasts as the ice cracked, gave way, and shifted to the weight above; echoes filled the sodden valley with memories of the summer months. It was as if the seasons had changed, as if the zodiacal procession had been thrown into confusion. The frozen surface of the Salmon was inundated; water four feet deep in some places ran over it.
The general wonder at this occurrence changed to consternation when it was seen that the glacier acted like a battering-ram of stupendous size, buckling the river ice in front of it as if ice were made of paper. That seven-foot armor was crushed, broken into a thousand fragments, which threatened to choke the stream. A half-mile below the bridge site the Salmon was pinched as if between two jaws; its smooth surface was rapidly turned into an indescribable jumble of up-ended cakes.
When a fortnight had passed O'Neil began to fear that this movement would go on until the channel had been closed as by a huge sliding door. In that case the rising waters would quickly wipe out all traces of his work. Such a crumpling and shifting of the ice had never occurred before—at least, not within fifty years, as the alder and cottonwood growth on the east bank showed; but nothing seemed impossible, no prank too grimly grotesque for Nature to play in this solitude. O'Neil felt that his own ingenuity was quite unequal to the task of combating this peril. Set against forces so tremendous and arbitrary human invention seemed dwarfed to a pitiable insignificance.
Day after day he watched the progress of that white palisade; day after day he scanned the heavens for a sign of change, for out of the sky alone could come his deliverance. Hourly tests were made at the bridge site, lest the ice should give way before the pressure from below and by moving up-stream destroy the intricate pattern of piling which was being driven to support the steelwork. But day after day the snows continued to melt and the rain to fall. Two rivers were now boiling past the camp, one hidden deep, the other a shallow torrent which ran upon a bed of ice. The valley was rent by the sounds of the glacier's snail-like progress.
Then, without apparent cause, the seasons fell into order again, the mercury dropped, the surface-water disappeared, the country was sheeted with a glittering crust over which men walked, leaving no trace of footprints. Jackson became silent: once again the wind blew cold from out of the funnel-mouth and the bridge-builders threshed their arms to start their blood. But the glacier face had advanced four hundred feet from its position in August; it had narrowed the Salmon by fully one-half its width.
Fortunately, the bridge had suffered no damage as yet, and no one foresaw the effect which these altered conditions were to have.
The actual erection of steelwork was impossible during the coldest months; Parker had planned only to rush the piers, abutments, and false-work to completion so that he could take advantage of the mild spring weather preceding the break-up. The execution of this plan was in itself an unparalleled undertaking, making it necessary to hire double crews of picked men. Yet, as the weeks wore into months the intricate details were wrought out one by one, and preparations were completed for the great race.
Late in March Dan Appleton went to the front, taking with him his wife and his sister, for whom O'Neil had thoughtfully prepared suitable living-quarters. The girls were as hungry as Dan to have a part in the deciding struggle, or at least to see it close at hand, for the spirit of those engaged in the work had entered them also. Life at Omar of late had been rather uneventful, and they looked forward with pleasure to a renewal of those companionable relations which had made the summer months so, full of interest and delight. But they were disappointed. Life at the end of the line they found to be a very grim, a very earnest, and in some respects an extremely disagreeable affair: the feverish, unceasing activity of their friends left no time for companionship or recreation of any sort. More and more they, too, came to feel the sense of haste and strain pervading the whole army of workers, the weight of responsibility that bore upon the commander.
Dan became almost a stranger to them, and when they saw him he was obsessed by vital issues. Mellen was gruff and irritable: Parker in his preoccupation ignored everything but his duties. Of all their former comrades O'Neil alone seemed aware of their presence. But behind his smile they saw the lurking worries; in his eyes was an abstraction they could not penetrate, in his bearing the fatigue of a man tried to the breaking-point.
To Eliza there was a certain joy merely in being near the man she loved, even though she could not help being hurt by his apparent indifference. The long weeks without sight of him had deepened her feeling, and she had turned for relief to the writing of her book—the natural outlet for her repressed emotions. Into its pages she had poured all her passion, all her yearning, and she had written with an intimate understanding of O'Neil's ambitions and aims which later gave the story its unique success as an epic of financial romance.
Hers was a nature which could not be content with idleness. She took up the work that she and Natalie had begun, devoting herself unobtrusively yet effectively to making O'Neil comfortable. It was a labor of love, done with no expectation of reward; it thrilled her, filling her with mingled sadness and satisfaction. But if Murray noticed the improvement in his surroundings, which she sometimes doubted, he evidently attributed it to a sudden access of zeal on the part of Ben, for he made no comment. Whether or not she wished him to see and understand she could hardly tell. Somehow his unobservant, masculine acceptance of things better and worse appealed to the woman in her. She slipped into O'Neil's quarters during his absence, and slipped out again quietly; she learned to know his ways, his peculiarities; she found herself caressing and talking to his personal belongings as if they could hear and understand. She conducted long conversations with the objects on his bureau. One morning Ben entered unexpectedly to surprise her in the act of kissing Murray's shaving-mirror as if it still preserved the image of its owner's face, after which she banished the cook-boy utterly and performed his duties with her own hands.
Of course, discovery was inevitable. At last O'Neil stumbled in upon her in the midst of her task, and, questioning her, read the truth from her blushes and her incoherent attempts at explanation.
"So! You're the one who has been doing this!" he exclaimed, in frank astonishment. "And I've been tipping Benny for his thoughtfulness all this time! The rascal has made enough to retire rich."
"He seemed not to understand his duties very well, so I took charge. But you had no business to catch me!" The flush died from Eliza's cheeks, and she faced him with thoroughly feminine indignation.
"I can't let you go on with this," said Murray. "_I_ ought to be doing something for YOU."
But the girl flared up defiantly. "I love it. I'll do it, no matter if you lock me out. I'm not on the pay-roll, you know, so you have no authority over me—none at all!"
His eyes roved around the room, and for the first time he fully took in the changes her hands had wrought.
"My dear child, it's very nice to be spoiled this way and have everything neat and clean, but—it embarrasses me dreadfully to have you saddled with the sordid work—"
"It isn't sordid, and—what brought you home at this hour, anyhow?" she demanded.
O'Neil's smile gave place to an anxious frown.
"The ice is rising, and—"
"Rising?"
"Yes. Our old enemy Jackson Glacier is causing us trouble again. That jam of broken ice in front of it is backing up the water—there's more running now, and the ice is lifting. It's lifting the false-work with it, pulling the piles out of the river-bottom like splinters out of a sore hand."
"That's pretty bad, isn't it?"
"It certainly is. It threatens to throw everything out of alignment and prevent us from laying the steel if we don't check it."
"Check it!" cried Eliza. "How can you check a thing like that?"
"Easily enough, if we can spare the hands—by cutting away the ice where it is frozen to the piles, so that it won't lift them with it. The trouble is to get men enough—you see, the ice is nine feet thick now. I've set every man to work with axes and chisels and steam-points, and I came up to telephone Slater for more help. We'll have to work fast, night and day."
"There's nobody left in Omar," Eliza said, quickly.
"I know. Tom's going to gather all he can at Cortez and Hope and rush them out here. Our task is to keep the ice cut away until help arrives."
"I suppose it's too late in the season to repair any serious damage?"
"Exactly. If you care to go back with me you can see what we're doing." As they set off for the bridge site Murray looked down at Eliza, striding man-like beside him, with something of affectionate appreciation in his eyes, and said humbly: "It was careless of me not to see what you have been doing for me all this time. My only excuse is that I've been driven half mad with other things. I—haven't time to think of myself."
"All housekeepers have a thankless task," laughed Eliza.
When they reached the river-bank she saw everything apparently just as when she had last seen it. "Why, it's not as bad as I imagined!" she exclaimed. "I thought I'd find everything going to smash."
"Oh, there's nothing spectacular about it. There seldom is about serious mishaps in this business. The ice has risen only an inch or more so far, but the very slowness and sureness of it is what's alarming. It shows that the water is backing up, and as the flow increases the rise of the ice will quicken. If it starts to move up or down stream, we're lost."
There was ample evidence that the menace was thoroughly understood, for the whole day shift was toiling at the ice, chopping it, thawing it, shoveling it away, although its tremendous thickness made their efforts seem puerile. Everywhere there was manifested a frantic haste, a grim, strained eagerness that was full of ominous meaning.
All that day Eliza watched the unequal struggle, and in the evening Dan brought her reports that were far from reassuring. The relentless movement showed no sign of ceasing. When she retired that night she sought ease from her anxiety in a prayer that was half a petition for O'Neil's success and half an exceedingly full and frank confession of her love for him. Outside, beneath the glare of torches and hastily strung incandescents, a weary army toiled stubbornly, digging, gouging, chopping at the foot of the towering wall of timbers which stretched across the Salmon. In the north the aurora borealis played brilliantly as if to light a council of the gods.
On the following day "Happy Tom" arrived with fifty men.
"I got the last mother's son I could find," he explained, as he warmed himself at O'Neil's stove.
"Did you go to Hope?"
"I did, and I saw the splavvus, himself."
"Gordon?"
"He's worse than we thought." Tom tapped his shining forehead significantly. "Loft to let!"
"What—insane?"
"Nothing but echoes in his dome. The town's as empty as his bonnet too, and the streets are full of snow. It's a sight!"
"Tell me about Mrs. Gordon."
"She's quite a person," said Slater, slowly. "She surprised me. She's there, alone with him and a watchman. She does all the work, even to LUGGING in the wood and coal—he's too busy to help—but she won't leave him. She told me that Dan and Natalie wanted her to come over here, but she couldn't bring herself to do it or to let them assist in any way. Gordon spends all his time at his desk, promoting, writing ads and prospectuses. He's got a grand scheme. He's found that 'Hope Consolidated' is full of rich ore, but the trouble is in getting it out; so he's working on a new process of extraction. It's a wonderful process—you'd never guess what it is. He SMOKES it out! He says all he needs is plenty of smoke. That bothered him until he hit on the idea of burning feathers. Now he's planning to raise ducks, because they've got so much down. Isn't that the limit? She'll have to fit him into a padded cell sooner or later."
"Poor devil!" said O'Neil. "I'm sorry. He had an unusual mind."
Slater sniffed. "I think it's pretty soft for him, myself. He's made better than a stand-off—he lost his memory, but he saved his skin. It's funny how some men can't fall: if they slip on a banana-peel somebody shoves a cushion under 'em before they 'light. _I_ never got the best of anything. If I dropped asleep in church my wife would divorce me and I'd go to the electric chair. Gordon robs widows and orphans, right and left, then ends up with a loving woman to take care of him in his old age. Why, if I even robbed a blind puppy of a biscuit I'd leave a thumb-print on his ear, or the dog's mother would turn out to be a bloodhound. Anyhow, I'd spend MY declining years nestled up to a rock-pile, with a mallet in my mit, and a low-browed gentleman scowling at me from the top of a wall. He'd lean on his shotgun and say, 'Hurry up, Fatty; it's getting late and there's a ton of oakum to pick.' It just goes to show that some of us is born behind the game and never get even, while others, like Gordon, quit winner no matter how much they lose." Having relieved himself of this fervid homily, "Happy Tom" unrolled a package of gum and thrust three sticks into his mouth. "Speaking of bad luck," he continued, "when are you going to get married, Murray?"
O'Neil started. "Why—never. It isn't the same kind of proposition as building a bridge, you know. There's a little matter of youth and good looks that counts considerably in the marriage business. No woman would have an old chap like me."
Slater took a mournful inventory of his chief's person, then said doubtfully: "You MIGHT put it over, Murray. I ain't strictly handsome, myself, but I did."
As O'Neil slipped into his fur coat, after the fat man had slouched out, he caught sight of himself in the glass of his bureau and paused. He leaned forward and studied the care-worn countenance that peered forth at him, then shook his head. He saw that the hair was growing grayer; that the face was very plain, and—yes, unquestionably, it was no longer youthful. Of course, he didn't feel old, but the evidence that he was so admitted of no disproof, and it was evidence of a sort which no woman could disregard. He turned from the glass with a qualm of disgust at his weakness in allowing himself to be influenced in the slightest by Tom's suggestion.
For a week the ice rose slowly, a foot a day, and in spite of the greatest watchfulness it took the false-work with it here and there. But concentrated effort at the critical points saved the structure from serious injury. Then the jam in front of Jackson Glacier went out, at least in part, and the ice began to fall. Down it settled, smoothly, swiftly, until it rested once more upon the shores. It was still as firm as in midwinter, and showed no sign of breaking; nor had it moved down-stream a hair's breadth. O'Neil gathered his forces for the final onslaught.
On April 5th the last of the steel for Span Number One reached the front, and erection was begun. The men fell to with a vim and an enthusiasm impossible to describe. With incredible rapidity the heavy sections were laid in place; the riveters began their metallic song; the towering three bent traveler ran smoothly on its track, and under it grew a web work of metal, braced and reinforced to withstand, in addition to ordinary strains, the pressure of a hundred-mile-an-hour wind. To those who looked on, the structure appeared to build itself, like some dream edifice; it seemed a miracle that human hands could work that stubborn metal so swiftly and with so little effort. But every piece had been cut and fitted carefully, then checked and placed where it was accessible.
Now that winter had broken, spring came with a rush. The snows began to shrink and the drifts to settle. The air grew balmier with every day; the drip from eaves was answered by the gurgling laughter of hidden waters. Here and there the boldest mountainsides began to show, and the tops of alder thickets thrust themselves into sight. Where wood or metal caught the sun-rays the snow retreated; pools of ice-water began to form at noon.
The days were long, too, and no frozen winds charged out of the north. As the daylight lengthened, so did the working-hours of the toilers.
On April 18th the span was completed. In thirteen days Mellen's crew had laid four hundred feet of the heaviest steel ever used in a bridge of this type. But there was no halt; the material for the second section had been assembled, meanwhile, and the traveler began to swing it into place.
The din was unceasing; the clash of riveters, the creak and rattle of hoists, the shouts of men mingled in a persistent, ear-splitting clamor; and foot by foot the girders reached out toward the second monolith which rose from the river-bed. The well-adjusted human machine was running smoothly; every man knew his place and the duties that went with it; the hands of each worker were capable and skilled. But now the hillsides were growing bare, rills gashed the sloping snow-fields, the upper gullies began to rumble to avalanches—forerunners of the process that would strip the earth of snow and ice and free the river in all its fury. In six days three hundred feet more of steel had been bolted fast to the complete section, and Span Two was in place. But the surface of the Salmon was no longer white and pure; it was dirty and discolored now, for the debris which had collected during the past winter was exposing itself. The icy covering was partially inundated also; shallow ponds formed upon it and were rippled by the south breeze. Running waters on every side sang a menace to the workers.
Then progress ceased abruptly. It became known that a part of the material for the third span had gone astray in its long journey across the continent. There had been a delay at the Pittsburg mills, then a blockade in the Sierras; O'Neil was in Omar at the end of the cable straining every nerve to have the shipment rushed through. Mellen brooded over his uncompleted work: Parker studied the dripping hills and measured the melting snows. He still smiled; but he showed his anxiety in a constant nervous unrest, and he could not sleep.
At length news came that Johnny Brennan had the steel aboard his ship and had sailed. A record run was predicted, but meanwhile the south wind brought havoc on its breath. The sun shone hotly into the valley of the Salmon, and instead of warmth it brought a chill to the hearts of those who watched and waited.
Twelve endless, idle days crawled by. Winter no longer gave battle; she was routed, and in her mad retreat she threatened to overwhelm O'Neil's fortunes.
On May 6th the needed bridge members were assembled, and the erection of Span Three began. The original plan had been to build this section on the cantilever principle, so as to gain independence of the river ice, but to do so would have meant slow work and much delay—an expenditure of time which the terms of the option made impossible. Arrangements had been made, therefore, to lay it on false-work as the other spans had been laid, risking everything upon the weather.
As a matter of precaution the southern half of the span was connected to the completed portion; but before the connection could be fully made the remainder of the jam in front of Jackson Glacier, which had caused so much trouble heretofore, went out suddenly, and the river ice moved down-stream about a foot, carrying with it the whole intricate system of supporting timbers beneath the uncompleted span. Hasty measurements showed that the north end of the steel then on the false-work was thirteen inches out of line.
It was Mr. Blaine who brought the tidings of this last calamity to Eliza Appleton. From his evident anxiety she gathered that the matter was of graver consequence than she could well understand.
"Thirteen inches in fifteen hundred feet can't amount to much," she said, vaguely.
Blaine smiled in spite of himself. "You don't understand. It's as bad as thirteen feet, for the work can't go on until everything is in perfect alignment. That whole forest of piles must be straightened."
"Impossible!" she gasped. "Why, there are thousands of them."
He shook his head, still smiling doubtfully. "Nothing is impossible to Mellen and Parker. They've begun clearing away the ice on the up-stream side and driving new anchor-piles above. They're going to fit tackle to them and yank the whole thing up-stream. I never heard of such a thing, but there's no time to do anything else." He cast a worried look at the smiling sky. "I wonder what will happen next. This is getting on my nerves."
Out on the river swift work was going on. Steam from every available boiler was carried across the ice in feed-pipes, the night shift had been roused from sleep, and every available man was busied in relieving the pressure. Pile-drivers hammered long timbers into the river-bed above the threatened point, hydraulic jacks were put in place, and steel cables were run to drum and pulley. The men worked sometimes knee-deep in ice-water; but they did not walk, they ran. In an incredibly short time the preparations were completed, a strain was put upon the tackle, and when night came the massive false-work had been pulled back into line and the traveler was once more swinging steel into place. It was a magnificent feat, yet not one of those concerned in it could feel confident that the work had not been done in vain; for the time was growing terribly short, and, although the ice seemed solid, it was rotting fast.
After the southern half of the span had been completed the warmth increased rapidly, therefore the steel crew lengthened its hours. The men worked from seven o'clock in the morning until eleven o'clock at night.
On the 13th, without warning of any sort, Garfield Glacier began moving forward. It had lain inactive even during the midwinter thaw which had started its smaller brother, but that warm spell had evidently had its effect upon the giant, for now he shook off his lethargy and awoke. He stirred, gradually at first and without sound, as if bent upon surprising the interlopers; then his speed increased. As the glacier advanced it thrust the nine-foot blanket of lake ice ahead of it, and this in turn crowded the river ice down upon the bridge. The movement at the camp site on the first day was only two inches, but that was sufficiently serious.
The onset of Garfield at this time was, of course, unexpected; for no forward motion had ever been reported prior to the spring break-up. The action of the ice heretofore had been alarming; but now consternation spread, a panic swept the ranks of the builders, for this was no short-lived phenomenon, this was the annual march of the glacier itself which promised to continue indefinitely. A tremendous cutting-edge, nine feet in thickness, like the blade of a carpenter's plane, was being driven against the bridge by an irresistible force.
Once again the endless thawing and chopping and gouging of ice began, but the more rapidly the encroaching edge was cut away the more swiftly did it bear down. The huge mass began to rumble; it "calved," it split, it detonated, and, having finally loosened itself from its bed, it acquired increased momentum. As the men with chisels and steam-points became exhausted others took their places, but the structural gang clung to its perch above, augmenting the din of riveters and the groaning of blocks and tackle. Among the able-bodied men sleep now was out of the question, for the ice gained in spite of every effort. It was too late to remove the steel in the uncompleted span to a place of safety, for that would have required more time than to bridge the remaining gap.
Piling began to buckle and bend before that irresistible push; the whole nicely balanced mass of metal was in danger of being unseated. Mellen cursed the heavens in a black fury; Parker smiled through white lips; O'Neil ground his teeth and spurred his men on.
This feverish haste brought its penalty. On the evening of the 14th, when the span was more than three-quarters finished, a lower chord section fouled as it was lifted, and two loading-beams at the top of the traveler snapped.
On that day victory had been in sight; the driving of the last bolt had been but a question of hours, a race with the sliding ice. But with the hoisting apparatus out of use work halted. Swiftly, desperately, without loss of a moment's time, repairs began. No regrets were voiced, no effort was made to place the blame, for that would have caused delay, and every minute counted. Eleven hours later the broken beams were replaced, and erection had recommenced.
But now for those above there was danger to life and limb. During the pause the ice had gained, and no effort could relieve the false-work of its strain. All knew that if it gave way the workmen would be caught in a chaos of collapsing wood and steel.
From the morning of May 14th until midnight of the 16th the iron-workers clung to their tasks. They dropped their tools and ran to their meals; they gulped their food and fled back to their posts. The weaker ones gave out and staggered away, cursed and taunted by their companions. They were rough fellows, and in their deep-throated profanity was a prayer.
The strong ones struggled on, blind with weariness, but upheld by that desperate, unthinking courage that animates a bayonet charge. It seemed that every moment must see the beginning of that slow work of demolition which would send them all scurrying to safety; but hour after hour the piling continued to hold and the fingers of steel to reach out, foot by foot, for the concrete pier which was their goal.
At midnight of the 16th the last rivet was driven; but the ice had gained to such an extent that the lower chord was buckled down-stream about eight inches, and the distance was growing steadily. Quickly the traveler was shifted to the false-work beyond the pier, and the men under Mellen's direction fell to splitting out the blocking.
As the supports were chopped away the mass began to crush the last few wedges; there was a great snapping and rending of wood; and some one, strained to the breaking-point, shouted:
"Look out! There she goes!"
A cry of terror arose, the men fled, trampling one another in their panic. But Mellen charged them like a wild man, firing curses and orders at them until they rallied. The remaining supports were removed; the fifteen hundred tons of metal settled into place and rested securely on its foundations.
O'Neil was the last man ashore. As he walked the completed span from Pier Three the barricade of piling beneath him was bending and tearing; but he issued no orders to remove it, for the river was doing that. In the general haste pile-drivers, hoists, boilers, and various odds and ends of machinery and material had been left where they stood. They were being inundated now; many of them were all but submerged. There was no possibility of saving them at present, for the men were half dead from exhaustion.
As he lurched up the muddy, uneven street to his quarters Murray felt his fatigue like a heavy burden, for he had been sixty hours without sleep. He saw Slater and Appleton and the rest of his "boys"; he saw Natalie and Eliza, but he was too tired to speak to them, or to grasp what they said. He heard the workmen cheering Mellen and Parker and himself. It was very foolish, he thought, to cheer, since the river had so nearly triumphed and the final test was yet to come.
He fell upon his bed, clothed as he was; an hour later the false-work beneath Span Three collapsed.
Although the bridge was not yet finished, the most critical point of its construction had been passed, for the fourth and final portion would be built over shallow water, and no great difficulties were to be expected even though the ice went out before the work was finished. But Murray had made his promise and his boast to complete the structure within a stated time, and he was determined to live up to the very letter of his agreement with the Trust. As to the result of the break-up, he had no fear whatever.
For once Nature aided him: she seemed to smile as if in approval of his steadfastness. The movement of the channel ice became irregular, spasmodic, but it remained firm until the last span had been put in place.
Of this dramatic struggle Eliza Appleton had watched every phase with intensest interest; but when at last she knew that the battle was won she experienced a peculiar revulsion of feeling. So long as O'Neil had been working against odds, with the prospect of ruin and failure forever imminent, she had felt an almost painful sympathy, but now that he had conquered she felt timid about congratulating him. He was no longer to be pitied and helped; he had attained his goal and the fame he longed for. His success would inevitably take him out of her life. She was very sorry that he needed her no longer.
She did not watch the last bridge-member swung, but went to her room, and tried to face the future. Spring was here, her book was finished, there was the need to take up her life again.
She was surprised when Murray came to find her.
"I missed you, Eliza," he said. "The others are all down at the river-bank. I want you to congratulate me."
She saw, with a jealous twinge, that exultation over his victory had overcome his weariness, that his face was alight with a fire she had never before seen. He seemed young, vigorous, and masterful once more.
"Of course," he went on, "the credit belongs to Parker, who worked the bridge out in each detail—he's marvelous—and to Mellen, who actually built it, but I helped a little. Praise to me means praise to them."
"It is all over now, isn't it?"
"Practically. Blaine has cabled New York that we've won. Strictly speaking, we haven't as yet, for there's still the break-up to face; but the bridge will come through it without a scratch. The ice may go out any minute now, and after that I can rest." He smiled at her gladly. "It will feel good to get rid of all this responsibility, won't it? I think you've suffered under it as much as I have."
A little wistfully she answered: "You're going to realize that dream you told me about the day of the storm at Kyak. You have conquered this great country—just as you dreamed."
He acquiesced eagerly, boyishly. "Yes. Whirring wheels, a current of traffic, a broad highway of steel—that's the sort of monument I want to leave."
"Sometime I'll come back and see it all completed and tell myself that I had a little part in making it."
"Come back?" he queried. "Why, you're going to stay till we're through, aren't you?"
"Oh no! I'm going south with the spring flight—on the next boat, perhaps."
His face fell; the exultant light gradually faded from his eyes.
"Why—I had no idea! Aren't you happy here?"
She nodded. "But I must try to make good in my work as you have in yours."
He was looking at her sorrowfully, almost as if she had deserted him. "That's too bad, but—I suppose you must go. Yes; this is no place for you. I dare say other people need you to bring sunshine and joy to them just as we old fellows do, but—I've never thought about your leaving. It wouldn't be right to ask you to stay here among such people as we are when you have so much ahead of you. Still, it will leave a gap. Yes—it certainly will—leave a gap."
She longed desperately to tell him how willingly she would stay if he only asked her, but the very thought shocked her into a deeper reserve.
"I'm going East to sell my book," she said, stiffly. "You've given me the climax of the story in this race with the seasons."
"Is it a—love story?" he asked.
Eliza flushed. "Yes. It's mostly love."
"You're not at all the girl I thought you when we first met. You're very—different. I'm sure I won't recognize myself as the hero. Who—or what is the girl in the story?"
"Well, she's just the kind of girl that would appeal to a person like you. She's tall and dark and dashing, and—of course, she's remarkably beautiful. She's very feminine, too."
"What's her name?"
Miss Appleton stammered: "Why—I—called her Violet—until I could think of a better—"
"What's wrong with Violet? You couldn't think of a better name than that. I'm fond of it."
"Oh, it's a good book-name, but for real life it's too—delicate." Eliza felt with vexation that her face was burning. She was sure he was laughing at her.
"Can't I read the manuscript?" he pleaded.
"Heavens! No! I—" She changed the subject abruptly. "I've left word to be called the minute the ice starts to go out. I want to see the last act of the drama."
When O'Neil left her he was vaguely perplexed, for something in her bearing did not seem quite natural. He was forlorn, too, at the prospect of losing her. He wondered if fathers suffered thus, or if a lover could be more deeply pained at a parting than he. Somehow he seemed to share the feelings of both.
Early on the following morning Eliza was awakened by a sound of shouting outside her window. She lay half dazed for a moment or two, until the significance of the uproar made itself apparent; then she leaped from her bed.
Men were crying:
"There she goes!"
"She's going out!"
Doors were slamming, there was the rustle and scuff of flying feet, and in the next room Dan was evidently throwing himself into his clothes like a fireman. Eliza called to him, but he did not answer; and the next moment he had fled, upsetting some article of furniture in his haste. Drawing her curtains aside, the girl saw in the brightening dawn men pouring down the street, dressing as they went. They seemed half demented; they were yelling at one another, but she could not gather from their words whether it was the ice which was moving or—the bridge. The bridge! That possibility set her to dressing with tremulous fingers, her heart sick with fear. She called to Natalie, but scarcely recognized her own voice.
"I—don't know," came the muffled reply to her question. "It sounds like something—terrible. I'm afraid Dan will fall in or—get hurt." The confusion in the street was growing. "ELIZA!" Natalie's voice was tragic.
"What is it, dear?"
"H—help me, quick!"
"How?"
"I can't find my other shoe."
But Eliza was sitting on the floor, lacing up her own stout boots, and an instant later she followed her brother, pursued by a wail of dismay from the adjoining chamber. Through the chill morning light she hurried, asking many questions, but receiving no coherent reply from the racing men; then after endless moments of suspense she saw with relief that the massive superstructure of the bridge was still standing. Above the shouting she heard another sound, indistinct but insistent. It filled the air with a whispering movement; it was punctuated at intervals by a dull rumbling and grinding. She found the river-bank black with forms, but like a cat she wormed her way through the crowd until the whole panorama lay before her.
The bridge stood as she had seen it on the yesterday—slender, strong, superb in the simplicity of its splendid outline; but beneath it and as far as her eyes could follow the river she saw, not the solid spread of white to which she had become accustomed, but a moving expanse of floes. At first the winter burden slipped past in huge masses, acres in extent, but soon these began to be rent apart; irregular black seams ran through them, opened, closed, and threw up ridges of ice-shavings as they ground together. The floes were rubbing against the banks, they came sliding out over the dry shore like tremendous sheets of cardboard manipulated by unseen hands, and not until their nine-foot edges were exposed to view did the mind grasp the appalling significance of their movement. They swept down in phalanxes upon the wedge-like ice-breakers which stood guard above the bridge-piers, then they halted, separated, and the armored cutting-edges sheared through them like blades.
A half-mile below, where the Salmon flung itself headlong against the upper wing of Jackson Glacier, the floating ice was checked by the narrowed passageway. There a jam was forming, and as the river heaved and tore at its growing burden a spectacular struggle went on. The sound of it came faintly but impressively to the watchers—a grinding and crushing of bergs, a roar of escaping waters. Fragments were up-ended, masses were rearing themselves edgewise into the air, were overturning and collapsing. They were wedging themselves into every conceivable angle, and the crowding procession from above was adding to the barrier momentarily. As the passageway became blocked the waters rose; the river piled itself up so swiftly that the eye could note its rise along the banks.
But the attention of the crowd was divided between the jam and something far out on the bridge itself. At first glance Eliza did not comprehend; then she heard a man explaining:
"He was going out when we got here, and now he won't come back."
The girl gasped, for she recognized the distant figure of a man, dwarfed to puny proportions by the bulk of the structure in the mazes of which he stood. The man was O'Neil; he was perched upon one of the girders near the center of the longest span, where he could watch the attack upon the pyramidal ice-breakers beneath him.
"He's a fool," said some one at Eliza's back. "That jam is getting bigger."
"He'd better let the damned bridge take care of itself."
She turned and began to force her way through the press of people between her and the south abutment. She arrived there, disheveled and panting, to find Slater, Mellen, and Parker standing in the approach. In front of them extended the long skeleton tunnel into which Murray had gone.
"Mr. O'Neil is out there!" she cried to Tom.
Slater turned and, reading the tragic appeal in her face, said reassuringly:
"Sure! But he's all right."
"They say—there's danger."
"Happy Tom's" round visage puckered into a doubtful smile. "Oh, he'll take care of himself."
Mellen turned to the girl and said briefly:
"There's no danger whatever."
But Eliza's fear was not to be so easily quieted.
"Then why did he go out alone? What are you men doing here?"
"It's his orders," Tom told her.
Mellen was staring at the jam below, over which the Salmon was hurling a flood of ice and foaming waters. The stream was swelling and rising steadily; already it had nearly reached the level of the timberline on the left bank; the blockade was extending up-stream almost to the bridge itself. Mellen said something to Parker, who shook his head silently.
Dan Appleton shouldered his way out of the crowd, with Natalie at his heels. She had dressed herself in haste: her hair was loose, her jacket was buttoned awry; on one foot was a shoe, on the other a bedroom slipper muddy and sodden. Her dark eyes were big with excitement.
"Why don't you make Murray come in?" Dan demanded sharply.
"He won't do it," muttered Slater.
"The jam is growing. Nobody knows what'll happen if it holds much longer. If the bridge should go—"
Mellen whirled, crying savagely: "It won't go! All hell couldn't take it out."
From the ranks of the workmen came a bellow of triumph, as an unusually heavy ice-floe was swept against the breakers and rent asunder. The tumult of the imprisoned waters below was growing louder every moment: across the lake came a stentorian rumble as a huge mass was loosened from the front of Garfield. The channel of the Salmon where the onlookers stood was a heaving, churning caldron over which the slim bridge flung itself defiantly.
Eliza plucked at her brother's sleeve imploringly, and he saw her for the first time.
"Hello, Sis," he cried. "How did you get here?"
"Is he in—danger, Danny?"
"Yes—no! Mellen says it's all right, so it must be, but—that dam—"
At that moment Natalie began to sob hysterically, and Dan turned his attention to her.
But his sister was not of the hysterical kind. Seizing Tom Slater by the arm, she tried to shake him, demanding fiercely:
"Suppose the jam doesn't give way! What will happen?" "Happy Tom" stared at her uncomprehendingly. Her voice was shrill and insistent. "Suppose the water rises higher. Won't the ice sweep down on the bridge itself? Won't it wreck everything if it goes out suddenly? Tell me—"
"It can't hold. Mellen says so." Slater, like the others, found it impossible to keep his eyes from the river where those immeasurable forces were at play; then in his peculiar irascible manner he complained: "I told 'em we was crazy to try this. It ain't a white man's country; it ain't a safe place for a bridge. There's just one God-awful thing after another—" He broke into a shout, for Eliza had slipped past him and was speeding like a shadow out across the irregularly spaced ties upon which the bridge track was laid.
Mellen whirled at the cry and made after her, but he might as well have tried to catch the wind. As she ran she heard her brother shout in sudden alarm and Natalie's voice raised in entreaty, but she sped on under an impulse as irresistible as panic fear. Down through the openings beneath her feet she saw, as in a nightmare, the sweeping flood, burdened with plunging ice chunks and flecked with foam. She seemed to be suspended above it; yet she was running at reckless speed, dimly aware of the consequences of a misjudged footstep, but fearful only of being overtaken. Suddenly she hated her companions; her mind was in a furious revolt at their cowardice, their indecision, or whatever it was that held them like a group of wooden figures safe on shore while the man whose life was worth all theirs put together exposed himself to needless peril. That he was really in danger she felt sure. She knew that Murray was apt to lose himself in his dreams; perhaps some visionary mood had blinded him to the menace of that mounting ice-ridge it front of the glacier, or had he madly chosen to stand or fall with this structure that meant so much to him? She would make him yield to her own terror, drag him ashore, if necessary, with her own hands.
She stumbled, but saved herself from a fall, then gathered her skirts more closely and rushed on, measuring with instinctive nicety the length of every stride. It was not an easy path over which she dashed, for the ties were unevenly spaced; gaping apertures gave terrible glimpses of the river below, and across these ghastly abysses she had to leap.
The hoarse bursts of shouting from the shore ceased as the workmen beheld her flitting out along the steel causeway. They watched her in dumb amazement.
All at once O'Neil saw her and hurried to meet her.
"Eliza!" he cried. "Be careful! What possessed you to do this?"
"Come away," she gasped. "It's dangerous. The jam—Look!" She pointed down the channel.
He shook his head impatiently.
"Yes!" she pleaded. "Yes! Please! They wouldn't come to warn you—they tried to stop me. You must go ashore." The frightened entreaty in her clear, wide-open eyes, the disorder that her haste had made affected O'Neil strangely. He stared at her, bewildered, doubtful, then steadied her and groped with his free hand for support. He could feel her trembling wretchedly.
"There's no danger, none whatever," he said, soothingly. "Nothing can happen."
"You don't know. The bridge has never been tried. The ice is battering at it, and that jam—if it doesn't burst—"
"But it will. It can't last much longer."
"It's rising—"
"To be sure, but the river will overflow the bank."
"Please!" she urged. "You can do no good here. I'm afraid."
He stared at her in the same incredulous bewilderment; some impulse deep within him was struggling for expression, but he could not find words to frame it. His eyes were oddly bright as he smiled at her.
"Won't you go ashore?" she begged.
"I'll take you back, of course, but I want to stay and see—"
"Then—I'll stay."
"Eliza!" Her name burst from his lips in a tone that thrilled her, but with it came a sudden uproar from the distant crowd, and the next instant they saw that the ice-barrier was giving way. The pressure had become irresistible. As the Salmon had risen the ice had risen also, and now the narrow throat was belching its contents forth. The chaos of up-ended bergs was being torn apart; over it and through it burst a deluge which filled the valley with the roar of a mighty cataract. Clouds of spray were in the air; broken masses were leaping and somersaulting; high up on the shore were stranded floes and fragments, left in the wake of the moving body. Onward it coursed, clashing and grinding along the brittle face of the glacier; over the alder tops beyond the bend they could see it moving faster and faster, like the crest of a tidal wave. The surface of the river lowered swiftly beneath the bridge; the huge white pans ground and milled, shouldered aside by the iron-sheathed pillars of concrete.
"See! It's gone already. Once it clears a passageway we'll have no more gorges, for the freshets are coming. The bridge didn't even tremble—there wasn't a tremor, not a scratch!" Eliza looked up to find O'Neil regarding her with an expression that set her heart throbbing and her thoughts scattering. She clasped a huge, cold bolt-head and clung to it desperately, for the upheaval in her soul rivaled that which had just passed before her eyes. The bridge, the river, the valley itself were gyrating slowly, dizzily.
"Eliza!" She did not answer. "Child!" O'Neil's voice was shaking. "Why did you come to me? Why did you do this mad thing? I saw something in your face that I can't believe—that I—can't think possible. It—it gives me courage. If I don't speak quickly I'll never dare. Is it—true? Dear girl, can it be? I'm so old—such a poor thing—you couldn't possibly care, and yet, WHY DID YOU COME?" The words were torn from him; he was gripped and shaken by a powerful emotion.
She tried to answer, but her lips were soundless. She closed her eyes, and Murray saw that she was whiter than the foam far beneath. He stared into the colorless face upturned to his until her eyelids fluttered open and she managed to voice the words that clung in her throat.
"I've always—loved you like this."
He gave a cry, like that of a starving man; she felt herself drawn against him. But now he, too, was speechless; he could only press her close while his mind went groping for words to express that joy which was as yet unbelievable and stunning.
"Couldn't you see?" she asked, breathlessly.
He shook his head. "I'm such a dreamer. I'm afraid it—can't be true. I'm afraid you'll go away and—leave me. You won't ever—will you, Eliza? I couldn't stand that." Then fresh realization of the truth swept over him; they clung to each other, drunk with ecstasy, senseless of their surroundings.
"I thought you cared for Natalie," she said, softly, after a while.
"It was always you."
"Always?"
"Always!"
She turned her lips to his, and lifted her entwining arms.
The breakfast-gong had called the men away before the two figures far out upon the bridge picked their way slowly to the shore. The Salmon was still flooded with hurrying masses of ice, as it would continue to be for several days, but it was running free; the channel in front of the glacier was open.
Blaine was the first to shake O'Neil's hand, for the members of Murray's crew held aloof in some embarrassment.
"It's a perfect piece of work," said he. "I congratulate you."
The others echoed his sentiments faintly, hesitatingly, for they were abashed at what they saw in their chief's face and realized that words were weak and meaningless.
Dan dared not trust himself to speak. He had many things to say to his sister, but his throat ached miserably. Natalie restrained herself only by the greatest effort.
It was Tom Slater who ended the awkward pause by grumbling, sarcastically:
"If all the young lovers are safely ashore, maybe us old men who built the bridge can go and get something to eat."
Murray smiled at the girl beside him.
"I'm afraid they've guessed our secret, dear."
"Secret!" Slater rolled his eyes. "There ain't over a couple thousand people beside us that saw you pop the question. I s'pose she was out of breath and couldn't say no."
Eliza gasped and fled to her brother's arms.
"Sis! Poor—little Sis!" Dan cried, and two tears stole down his brown cheeks. "Isn't this—just great?" Then the others burst into a noisy expression of their gladness.
"Happy Tom" regarded them all pessimistically. "I feel bound to warn you," he said at length, "that marriage is an awful gamble. It ain't what it seems."
"It is!" Natalie declared. "It's better, and you know it."
"It turned out all right for me," Tom acknowledged, "because I got the best woman in the world. But"—he eyed his chief accusingly—"I went about it in a modest way; I didn't humiliate her in public."
He turned impatiently upon his companions, still pouring out their babble of congratulations.
"Come along, can't you," he cried, "and leave 'em alone. I'm a dyspeptic old married man, but I used to be young and affectionate, like Murray. After breakfast I'm going to cable Mrs. Slater to come and bring the kids with her and watch her bed-ridden, invalid husband build the rest of this railroad. I'm getting chuck full of romance."
"It has been a miraculous morning for me," said Murray, after a time, "and the greatest miracle is—you, dear."
"This is just the way the story ended in my book," Eliza told him happily—"our book."
He pressed her closer. "Yes! Our book—our bridge—our everything, Eliza."
She hid her blushing face against his shoulder, then with thumb and finger drew his ear down to her lips. Summoning her courage, she whispered:
"Murray dear, won't you call me—Violet?"