The former district attorney started slightly. Then, coming still closer, he peered into the tense, angry features of Barry Houston.
"A bit melodramatic, aren't you?" he asked in a sneering tone.
"Perhaps so. But then murder is always melodramatic."
"Murder? You don't intend—"
"No. I simply referred to the past. I should have said 'reference to murder.' I hope you will pardon me if any inelegance of language should offend you."
"Sarcastic, aren't you?"
"I have a right to be. Knowing what I know—I should use more than sarcasm."
"If I'm not mistaken, you have. The butler spoke of some threat."
"Hardly a threat, Mr. Worthington." Houston was speaking coldly, incisively. "Merely what I have heard you often call in court a statement of fact. In case it wasn't repeated to you correctly, I'll bore you with it again. I said that if you didn't see me immediately, there would be something extremely distasteful to you in the morning papers."
"Well? I've seen you. Now—"
"Wait just a moment, Mr. Worthington. I thought it was only civil lawyers who indulged in technicalities. I didn't know that criminal," and he put emphasis on the word, then repeated it, "that criminal lawyers had the habit also."
"If you'll cease this insulting—"
"Oh, I think I have a right to that. To tell the truth, I've only begun to insult you. That is—if you call this sort of a thing an insult. To get at the point of the matter, Mr. Worthington, I want to be fair with you. I've come here to ask something—I'll admit that—but it is something that should benefit you in a number of ways. But we'll speak of that later. The main point is this: I am thinking very seriously of suing the city of Boston for a million dollars."
"Well? What's that to me?" Worthington sighed, with a bit of relief, Houston thought, and walked back to the table for a cigarette. "I haven't anything to do with the city. Go as far as you like. I'm out of politics; in case you don't know, I'm in business for myself and haven't the least interest in what the city does, or what any one does to it."
"Even though you should happen to be the bone of contention—and the butt of what may be a good deal of unpleasant newspaper notoriety?"
"You're talking blackmail!"
"I beg your pardon. Blackmail is something by which one extorts money. I'm here to try to give you money—or at least the promise of it—and at the same time allow you to make up for something that should, whether it does or not, weigh rather heavily on your conscience."
"If you'll come to the point."
"Exactly. Do you remember my case?"
"In a way. I had a good many of them."
"Which, I hope, you did not handle in the same way that you did mine. But to recall it all to your recollection, I was accused of having killed my own cousin, Tom Langdon, with a mallet."
"Yes—I remember now. You two had some kind of a drunken fight."
"And you, at the time, if I remember correctly, had a fight of your own. It was nearing election time."
"Correct. I remember now." Then, with a little smile, "Quite luckily, I was beaten."
"I agree with you there. But to return to the original statement. Am I right, or am I wrong, when I say that you were striving very hard, for a record that would aid you in the election?"
"Every official tries to make the best possible record. Especially at election time."
"No matter whom it injures."
"I didn't say that."
"But I did—and I repeat it. No matter whom it injures! Now, to be plain and frank and brutal with you to-night as you were with me in the courtroom, Mr. Worthington, I have pretty convincing evidence that you knew I was innocent. Further, that you knew it almost at the beginning of the trial. But that in spite of this knowledge, you continued to persecute me—notice, I don't say prosecute—to persecute me in a hope of gaining a conviction, simply that you might go before the voters and point to me in prison as a recommendation of your efficiency as a district attorney."
"Oh!" Worthington threw away his cigarette with an angry gesture, and came forward. "You fellows are all the same. You're always squealing about your innocence. I never saw a man yet who wasn't innocent in one way or another. Even when they confess, they've got some kind of an alibi for their act. They didn't know the gun was loaded, or the other fellow hit them first or—"
"In my case I have no alibis. And this isn't simply my own statement. I have sufficient witnesses."
"Then why didn't you produce them at the trial?"
"I couldn't. You had them."
"I?"
"Yes. I don't mind giving you the names. One of them was Doctor Horton. Another was Doctor Mayer. A third was Doctor Brensteam, all physicians of the highest reputation. I would like, Mr. Worthington, to know why you did not make use of them in the trial instead of the expert Hamon, and that other one, Jaggerston, who, as every one knows, are professional expert witnesses, ready at all times to testify upon anything from handwriting to the velocity of a rifle bullet, providing they are sufficiently paid."
"Why? Simply because I figured they would make the best witnesses."
"It couldn't have been," and Houston's voice was more coldly caustic than ever, "that it was because they would be willing to perjure themselves, while the real doctors wouldn't?"
"Of course not! This whole thing is silly. Besides, I'm out of it entirely. I'm—"
"Mr. Worthington," and Houston's tone changed. "Your manner and your words indicate very plainly that you're not out of it—that you merely wish you were. Isn't that the truth? Don't you?"
"Well," and the man lit a fresh cigarette, "I feel that way about every murder case."
"But especially about this one. You're not naturally a persecutor. You don't naturally want to railroad men to the penitentiary. And I believe that, as a general thing, you didn't do it. You tried it in my case; election was coming on, you had just run up against two or three acquittals, and you had made up your mind that in my case you were going to run the gauntlet to get a conviction. I don't believe you wanted to send me up simply for the joy of seeing an innocent man confined in prison. You wanted a conviction—wasn't that it?"
"Every prosecutor works for that."
"Not when he knows the man is innocent, Mr. Worthington. You knew that—I have proof. I have evidence that you found it out almost at the beginning of my trial—August second, to be exact—and that you used this information to your own ends. In other words, it told you what the defense would testify; and you built up, with your professional experts, a wall to combat it. Now, isn't that the truth?"
"Why—" The former district attorney took more time than usual to knock the ashes from his cigarette, then suddenly changed the subject.
"You spoke of a suit you might bring when you came in here?"
"Yes. Against the city. I have a perfect one. I was persecuted when the official in charge of the case knew that I was not guilty. To that end I can call the three doctors I've mentioned and put them on the stand and ask them why they did not testify in the case. I also can call the officials of Bellstrand Hospital in New York where you conducted certain experiments on cadavers on the night of August second; also a doctor who saw you working in there and who watched you personally strike the blows with a mallet; further, I can produce the records of the hospital which state that you were there, give the names of the entire party, together with the number of corpses experimented upon. Is that sufficient evidence that I know what I'm talking about?"
Worthington examined his cigarette again.
"I suppose it's on the books down there. But there's nothing to state of what the experiments consisted."
"I have just told you that I have an eye-witness. Further, there are the three doctors."
"Have you seen them?"
Houston thought quickly. It was his only chance.
"I know exactly what their testimony will be."
"You've made arrangements for your suit then." Worthington's color had changed. Houston noticed that the hand which held the cigarette trembled slightly.
"No, I haven't. I'm not here to browbeat you, Mr. Worthington, or lie to you. It came to me simply as a ruse to get in to see you. But the more I think of it, the more I know that I could go through with it and possibly win it. I might get my million. I might not. I don't want money gained in that way. The taxpayers would have to foot the bill, not yourself."
"Oh, I guess I'd pay enough," Worthington had assumed an entirely different attitude now. "It would hurt me worse in business than it would if I were still in office. Whether it's true or not."
"You know in your heart that there's no doubt of that."
Worthington did not answer. Houston waited a moment, then went on.
"But personally, I don't want to file the suit. I don't want any money—that way. I don't want any bribes, or exculpations, or statements from you that you know me to be innocent. Some might believe it; others would only ask how much I paid to have that statement given out. The damage has been done and is next to irreparable. You could have cleared me easily enough by dropping the case, or making your investigations before ever an indictment was issued. You didn't, and I remain guilty in the minds of most of Boston, in spite of what the jury said. A man is not guilty until convicted—under the law. He is guilty as soon as accused, with the lay mind. So you can't help me much there; my only chance for freedom lies in finding the man who actually committed that murder. But that's something else. We won't talk about it. You owe me something. And I'm here to-night to ask you for it."
"I thought you said you didn't want any bribes."
"I don't. May I ask you what your margin of profit is at your machinery company?"
"My margin of profit? What's that? Well, I suppose it runs around twelve per cent."
"Then will you please allow me to give you twelve thousand dollars in profits? I'm in the lumber business. I have a contract that runs into the millions; surely that is good enough security to a man"—he couldn't resist the temptation—"who knows my absolute innocence. It isn't good enough for the bankers, who still believe me guilty, so I've come directly to you. I need one hundred thousand dollars' worth of lumber-mill machinery, blade saws, crosscuts, jackers, planers, kickers, chain belting, leather belting, and everything else that goes to make up a first-class plant. I can pay for it—in installments. I guarantee to give you every cent above my current running expenses until the bill is disposed of. My contract with the Mountain, Plains and Salt Lake Railroad is my bond. I don't even ask a discount, or for you to lose any of your profits. I don't even ask any public statement by you regarding my innocence. All I want is to have you do what you would do to any reputable business man who came to you with a contract running into the millions of dollars—to give me credit for that machinery. It's a fair proposition. Come in with me on it, and we'll forget the rest. Stay out—and I fight!"
For a long moment, Kilbane Worthington paced the floor, his hands clasped behind him, his rather thin head low upon his chest. Then, at last, he looked up.
"How long are you going to be in town?"
"Until this matter's settled."
"Where are you staying?"
"The Touraine."
"Very well. I'll have a machine there to pick you up at ten o'clock to-morrow morning and take you to my office. In the meanwhile—I'll think it over."
It was a grinning Barry Houston who leaped from the train at Tabernacle a week later and ran open-armed through the snow toward the waiting Ba'tiste.
"You got my telegram?" He asked it almost breathlessly.
"Ah,oui! oui, oui, oui!Sacre, and you are the wizard!"
"Hardly that." They were climbing into the bobsled. "I just had enough sense to put two and two together. On the train to Boston I got a tip about my case, something that led me to believe that the district attorney knew all the time that I was innocent. He had conducted experiments at the Bellstrand Hospital of which nothing had been said in the trial. Three famous doctors had been with him. As soon as I saw their names, I instinctively knew that if the experiments had turned out the way the district attorney had wanted them, he would have used them in the trial against me, but that their silence meant the testimony was favorable to me."
"Bon!" Ba'tiste grinned happily. "And he?"
"It just happened that he is now in the mill machinery business. I," and Houston smiled with the memory of his victory, "I convinced him that he should give me credit."
"Eet is good. In the woods, there are many men. The log, he is pile all about the mill. Three thousand tie, already they are stack up."
"And the woman—she has caused no trouble?"
"No. Peuff! I have no see her. Mebbe so, eet was a mistake."
"Maybe, Ba'tiste, but I was sure I recognized her. The Blackburn crowd hasn't given up the ghost yet?"
"Ah, no. But eet will. Still they think that we cannot fill the contract. They think that after the first shipment or so, then we will have to quit."
"They may be right, Ba'tiste. It would require nearly two thousand men to keep that mill supplied with logs, once we get into production, outside of the regular mill force, under conditions such as they are now. It would be ruinous. We've got to find some other way, Ba'tiste, of getting our product to the mill. That's all there is to it."
"Ba'teese, he have think of a way—that he have keep secret. Ba'teese, he have a, what-you-say, hump."
"Hunch, you mean?"
"Ah,oui. Eet is this. We will not bring the log to the mill. We will bring the mill to the log. We have to build the new plant, yes,oui? Then,bon, we shall build eet in the forest, where there is the lumber."
"Quite so. And then who will build a railroad switch that can negotiate the hills to the mill?"
"Ah!" Ba'tiste clapped a hand to his forehead. "Veritas? I am the prize, what-you-say, squash! Ba'teese, he never think of eet!" A moment he sat glum, only to surge with another idea. "But, now, Ba'teese have eet! He shall go to Medaine! He shall tell her to write to the district attorney of Boston—that he will tell her—"
"It was part of my agreement, Ba'tiste, that he be forced to make no statements regarding my innocence."
"Ah, but—"
"It was either that, or lose the machinery. He's in business. He's afraid of notoriety. The plain, cold truth is that he tried to railroad me, and only my knowledge of that fact led him into doing a decent and honorable thing. But I sealed any chance of his moral aid when I made my bargain. It was my only chance."
Slowly Ba'tiste nodded and slapped the reins on the back of the horse.
"Ba'teese will not see Medaine," came at last, and they went on.
Again the waiting game, but a busy game however, one which kept the ice roads polished and slippery; which resulted, day by day, in a constantly growing mountain of logs about the diminutive sawmill. One in which plans were drawn, and shell-like buildings of mere slats and slab sidings erected, while heavy, stone foundations were laid in the firm, rocky soil to support the machinery, when it arrived. A game in which Houston hurried from the forests to the mill and back again, now riding the log sheds as a matter of swifter locomotion, instead of for the thrill, as he once had done. Another month went by, to bring with it the bill of lading which told that the saws, the beltings, the planers and edgers and trimmers, and the half hundred other items of machinery were at last on their way, a month of activities and—of hopes.
For to Ba'tiste Renaud and Barry Houston there yet remained one faint chance. The Blackburn crowd had taken on a gamble, one which, at the time, had seemed safe enough; the investment of thousands of dollars for a plant which they had believed firmly would be free of competition. That plant could not hope for sufficient business to keep it alive, with the railroad contract gone, and the bigger mill of Houston and Renaud in successful operation. There would come the time when they must forfeit that lease and contract through non-payment, or agree to re-lease them to the original owner. But would that time arrive soon enough? It was a grim possibility,—a gambling wager that held forth hope, and at the same time threatened them with extinction. For the same thing applied to Houston and Ba'tiste that applied to Blackburn and Thayer. If they could not make good on their contract, the other mill was ever ready to step in.
"Eet all depen'," said Ba'tiste more than once during the snowy, frost-caked days in which they watched every freight train that pulled, white-coated, over the range into Tabernacle. "Eet all depen' on the future. Mebbe so, we make eet. Mebbe so, we do not. But we gamble, eh,monBaree?"
"With our last cent," came the answer of the other man, and in the voice was grimness and enthusiasm. It was a game of life or extinction now.
March, and a few warm days, which melted the snows only that they might crust again. Back and forth traveled the bobsled to Tabernacle, only to meet with disappointment.
"I've wired the agent at Denver three times about that stuff," came the announcement of the combined telegrapher and general supervisor of freight at the little station. "He's told me that he'd let me know as soon as it got in. But nothing's come yet."
A week more, and another week after that, in which spring taunted the hills, causing the streams to run bank-full with the melting waters of the snow, in which a lone robin made his appearance about the camp,—only to fade as quickly as he had come. For winter, tenacious, grim, hateful winter, had returned for a last fling, a final outburst of frigid viciousness that was destined to wrap the whole range country in a grip of terror.
They tried the bobsled, Ba'tiste and Houston, only to give it up. All night had the snow fallen, in a thick, curtain-like shield which blotted out even the silhouettes of the heaviest pines at the brow of the hill, which piled high upon the ridges, and with great sweeps of the wind drifted every cut of the road to almost unfathomable depths. The horses floundered and plowed about in vain efforts at locomotion, at last to plunge in the terror of a bottomless road. They whinnied and snorted, as though in appeal to the men on the sled behind,—a sled that worked on its runners no longer, but that sunk with every fresh drift to the main-boards themselves. Wadded with clothing, shouting in a mixture of French and English and his own peculiar form of slang, Ba'tiste tried in vain to force the laboring animals onward. But they only churned uselessly in the drift; their hoofs could find no footing, save the yielding masses of snow. Puffing, as though the exertion had been his own, the trapper turned and stared down at his companion.
"Eet is no use," came finally. "The horse, he can not pull. We must make the trip on the snowshoe."
They turned back for the bunk house, to emerge a few moments later,—bent, padded forms, fighting clumsily against the sweep of the storm. Ghosts they became almost immediately, snow-covered things that hardly could be discerned a few feet away, one hand of each holding tight to the stout cord which led from waist-belt to waist-belt, their only insurance against being parted from each other in the blinding swirl of winter.
Hours, stopping at short intervals to seek for some landmark—for the road long ago had become obliterated—at last to see faintly before them the little box-car station house, and to hurry toward it in a fear that neither of them dared to express to the other. Snow in the mountains is not a gentle thing, nor one that comes by fits and gusts. The blizzard does not sweep away its vengeful enthusiasm in a day or a night. It comes and it stays—departing for a time, it seems—that it may gather new strength and fury for an even fiercer attack. And the features of the agent, as he stared up from the rattling telegraph key, were not conducive to relief.
"Your stuff's on the way, if that's any news to you," came with a worried laugh. "It left Denver on Number 312 at five o'clock this morning behind Number Eight. That's no sign that it's going to get here. Eight isn't past Tollifer yet."
"Not past Tollifer?" Houston stared anxiously. "Why, it should be at the top of the range by now. It hasn't even begun to climb."
"Good reason. They're getting this over there too."
"The snow?"
"Worse than here, if anything. Denver reported ten inches at eleven o'clock—and it's fifteen miles from the range. There was three inches when the train started. Lord knows where that freight is—I can't get any word from it."
"But—"
"Gone out again!" The telegrapher hammered disgustedly on the key. "The darned line grounds on me about every five minutes. I—"
"Do you hear anything from Crestline—about conditions up there?"
"Bad. It's even drifting in the snowsheds. They've got two plows working in 'em keeping 'em open, and another down at Crystal Lake. If things let up, they're all right. If not—they'll run out of coal by to-morrow morning and be worse than useless. There's only about a hundred tons at Crestline—and it takes fuel to feed them babies. But so far—"
"Yes?"
"They're keeping things halfway open. Wait a minute—" he bent over the key again—"it's opened up. Number Eight's left Tollifer. The freight's behind it, and three more following that. I guess they're going to try to run them through in a bunch. They'll be all right—if they can only get past Crestline. But if they don't—"
He rattled and banged at the key for a long moment, cursing softly. Only the dead "cluck" of a grounded line answered him. Houston turned to Ba'tiste.
"It looks bad."
"Oui! But eet depen'—on the storm. Eet come this way, near' ev' spring. Las' year the road tie up—and the year before. Oh," he shrugged his shoulders, "that is what one get for living in a country where the railroad eet chase eetself all over the mountain before eet get here."
"There wouldn't be any chance at the tunnel either, would there? They haven't cut through yet."
"No—and they won' finish until June. That is when they figure—"
"That's a long way off."
"Too long," agreed Ba'tiste, and turned again toward the telegrapher, once more alert over a speaking key. But before it could carry anything but a fragmentary message, life was gone again, and the operator turned to the snow-caked window, with its dreary exterior of whirling snow that seemed to come ever faster.
"Things are going to get bad in this country if this keeps up," came at last. "There ain't any too great a stock of food."
"How about hay for the cattle?"
"All right. I guess. If the ranchers can get to it. But that's the trouble about this snow. It ain't like the usual spring blizzard. It's dry as a January fall, and it's sure drifting. Keeps up for four or five days; they'll be lucky to find the haystacks."
For a long time then, the three stood looking out the window, striving—merely for the sake of passing time—to identify the almost hidden buildings of the little town, scarcely more than a hundred yards away. At last the wire opened again, and the operator went once more to his desk. Ba'tiste and Houston waited for him to give some report. But there was none. At last:
"What is it?" Houston was at his side. The operator looked up.
"Denver asking Marionville if it can put its snowplow through and try to buck the drifts from this side. No answer yet."
A long wait. Then:
"Well, that's done. Only got one Mallett engine at Marionville. Other two are in the shop. One engine couldn't—"
He stopped. He bent over the key. His face went white—tense.
"God!"
"What's wrong?" The two men were close beside him now.
"Number one-eleven's kicked over the hill!"
"One-eleven—kicked over?"
"Yes. Snowplow. They're wiring Denver, from Crestline. The second plow's up there in the snowshed with the crew. One of 'em's dead. The other's—wait a minute, I have to piece it together."
A silence, except for the rattling of the key, broken, jagged, a clattering voice of the distance, faint in the roar and whine of the storm, yet penetrating as it carried the news of a far-away world,—a world where the three waiting men knew that all had turned to a white hell of wintry fury; where the grim, forbidding mountains were now the abiding place of the snow-ledge and the avalanche; where even steel and the highest product of invention counted for nothing against the blast of the wind and the swirl of the tempest. Then finally, as from far away, a strained voice came, the operator's:
"Ice had gotten packed on the rails already. One-eleven tried to keep on without a pick and shovel gang. Got derailed on a curve just below Crestline and went over. One-twelve's crew got the men up. The plow's smashed to nothing. Fifty-three thousand dollars' worth of junk now. Wait a minute—here's Denver."
Again one of those agonizing waits, racking to the two men whose future depended largely upon the happenings atop the range. Far on the other side, fighting slowly upward, was a freight train containing flatcar after flatcar loaded with the necessary materials of a large sawmill. True, June was yet two months away. But months are short when there is work to do, when machinery must be installed, and when contracts are waiting. Every day, every hour, every minute counted now. And as if in answer to their thoughts, the operator straightened, with a little gesture of hopelessness.
"Guess it's all off," came at last. "The general superintendent in Denver's on the wire. Says to back up everything to Tollifer, including the plows, and give up the ghost."
"Give it up?" Houston stared blankly at the telegrapher. "But that's not railroading!"
"It is when you're with a concern that's all but broke," answered the operator. "It's cheaper for this old wooden-axle outfit to quit than to go on fighting—"
"That mean six weeks eef this storm keep up two days longer!" Ba'tiste broke in excitedly. "By to-morrow morning, ever' snowshed, he will be bank-full of snow. The track, he will be four inches in ice. Six week—this country, he can not stand it! Tell him so on the telegraph! Tell him the cattle, he will starve! Peuff! No longer do I think of our machinery! Eef it is los'—we are los'. But let eet go. Say to heem nothing of that. Say to heem that there are the cattle that will starve, that in the stores there is not enough provision. That—"
"I know. I'll call Denver. But I don't know what chance there is—the road's been waiting for a chance to go into bankruptcy, anyway—since this new Carrow Point deal is about through. They haven't got any money—you know that, Ba'tiste. It's cheaper for them to shut down for six weeks than to try to keep running. That fifty thousand they lost on that snowplow just about put the crimp in 'em. It might cost a couple of hundred thousand more to keep the road open. What's the result? It's easier to quit. But I'll try 'em—"
He turned to the key and hammered doggedly. Only soggy deadness answered. He tested his plugs and tried again. In vain. An hour later, he still was there, fighting for the impossible, striving to gain an answer from vacancy, struggling to instil life into a thing deadened by ice, and drifts, and wind, and broken, sagging telegraph poles. The line was gone!
Until dusk they remained in the boxlike station, hoping against hope. But the whine and snarl of the wind were the only sounds that came to them, the steady banking of the snow against the windows the only evidence of life. The telegraph line, somewhere between Tabernacle and the country which lay over the bleak, now deadly range, was a shattered thing, with poles buried in drifts, with loose strands of wire swinging in the gusts of the blizzard, with ice coated upon the insulations, and repair—until the sun should come and the snows melt—an almost impossible task.
"It'd take a guy with a diving suit to find some of them wires, I guess," the operator hazarded, as he finally ceased his efforts and reached for his coat and hat and snowshoes. "There ain't no use staying here. You fellows are going to sleep in town to-night, ain't you?"
There was little else to do. They fought their way to the rambling boarding house, there to join the loafing group in what passed for a lobby and to watch with them the lingering death of day in a shroud of white. Night brought no cessation of the wind, no lessening of the banks of snow which now were drifting high against the first-story windows; the door was only kept in working order through constant sallies of the bent old boarding-house keeper, with his snow shovel.
Windows banged and rattled, with a muffled, eerie sound; snow sifted through the tiniest cracks, spraying upon those who sat near them. The old cannon-ball stove, crammed with coal, reached the point where dull red spots enlivened its bulging belly; yet the big room was cold with non-detectable drafts, the men shivered in spite of their heavy clothing, and the region outside the immediate radius of the heater was barn-like with frigidity. Midnight came, and the group about the stove slept in their chairs, rather than undergo the discomfort and coldness of bed.
Morning brought no relief. The storm was worse, if anything, and the boarding-house keeper faced drifts waist high at the doorway with his first shoveling expedition of the day. The telegrapher, at the frost-caked window, rubbed a spot with his hand and stared into the dimness of the flying snow, toward his station.
"Guess I'll have t' call for volunteers if I get in there to-day. We'll have to tunnel."
Ba'tiste and Houston joined him. The box car that served as a station house—always an object of the heaviest drifts—was buried! The big French-Canadian pulled at his beard.
"Peuff! Eet is like the ground hog," he announced. "Eet is underground already."
"Yeh. But I've got to get in there. The wire might be working."
"So? We will help, Baree and Ba'teese. Come—we get the shovels."
Even that was work. The town simply had ceased to be; the stores were closed, solitude was everywhere. They forced a window and climbed into the little general merchandise establishment, simply because it was easier than striving to get in through the door. Then, armed with their shovels, they began the work of tunneling to the station. Two hours later, the agent once more at his dead key, Ba'tiste turned to Houston.
"Eet is the no use here," he announced. "We must get to camp and assemble the men that are strong and willing to help. Then—"
"Yes?"
"Then, eet will be the battle to help those who are not fortunate. There is death in this storm."
Again with their waist-belt guide lines, they started forth, to bend against the storm in a struggle that was to last for hours; to lose their trail, to find it again, through the straggling poles that in the old days had carried telephone wires, and at last to reach the squat, snowed-in buildings of camp. There, Ba'tiste assembled the workmen in the bunk house.
"There are greater things than this now," he announced. "We want the strong men—who will go back with us to Tabernacle, and who will be willing to take the risk to help the countryside. Ah,oui, eet is the danger that is ahead. How many of you will go?"
One after another they readied for their snowshoes, silent men who acted, rather than spoke. A few were left behind, to care for the camp in case of emergencies, to keep the roofs as free from snow as possible and to avoid cave-ins. The rest filed outside, one by one, awkwardly testing the bindings of their snowshoes, and awaiting the command. At the doorway, Ba'tiste, his big hands fumbling, caught the paws of Golemar, his wolf-dog, and raised the great, shaggy creature against his breast.
"No," he said in kindly, indulgent fashion. "Eet is not for Golemar to go with us. The drift, they are deep. There is no crust on the snow. Golemar, he would sink above his head. Then blooey! There would be no Golemar!"
Guide lines were affixed. Once more, huddled, clumsy figures of white, one following the other, they made the gruelling trip back to Tabernacle and the duties which they knew lay before them. For already the reports were beginning to come in, brought by storm-weakened, blizzard-battered men, of houses where the roofs had crashed beneath the weight of snow, of lost ranchmen, of bawling cattle, drifting before the storm,—to death. It was the beginning of a two-weeks' siege of a white inferno.
Little time did Barry Houston have for thought in those weeks. There were too many other things to crowd upon him; too many cold, horrible hours in blinding snow, or in the faint glare of a ruddy sun which only broke through the clouds that it might jeer at the stricken country beneath it, then fade again in the whipping gusts of wind and its attendant clouds, giving way once more to the surging sweep of white and the howl of a freshened blizzard.
Telegraph poles reared only their cross-arms above the mammoth drifts. Haystacks became buried, lost things. The trees of the forest, literally harnessed with snow, dropped their branches like tired arms too weary to longer bear their burdens. The whole world, it seemed, was one great, bleak thing of dreary white,—a desert in which there was life only that there might be death, where the battle for existence continued only as a matter of instinct.
And through—or rather over—this bleak desert went the men of the West Country, silent, frost-burned men, their lips cracked from the cut of wind, their eyes blood-red with inflammation, struggling here and there with a pack of food upon their back that they might reach some desolate home where there were women and children; or stopping to pull and tug at a snow-trapped steer and by main effort, drag him into a barren spot where the sweep of the gale had kept the ground fairly clear of snow; at times also, they halted to dig into a haystack, and through long hours scattered the welcome food about for the bawling cattle; or gathered wood, where such a thing was possible, and lighting great fires, left them, that they might melt the snows about a spot near a supply of feed, where the famished cattle could gather and await the next trip of the rescuers, bearing them sustenance.
Oftimes they stopped in vain—the beast which they sought to succor was beyond aid—and a revolver shot sounded, muffled in the thickness of the storm. Then, with knives and axes, the attack came, and struggling forms bore to a ranch house the smoking portions of a newly butchered beef; food at least for one family until the relief of sun and warmth would come. It was a never-ending agony of long hours and muscle-straining work. But the men who partook—were men.
And side by side with the others, with giant Ba'tiste, with the silent woodsmen, with the angular, wiry ranchmen, was Barry Houston. His muscles ached. His head was ablaze with the eye-strain of constant white; his body numbed with cold from the time that he left the old cannon-ball stove of the boarding house in the early morning until he returned to it at night. Long ago had he lost hope,—so far as personal aims and desires were concerned. The Crestline road was tied up; it had quit completely; Barry Houston knew that the fury of the storm in this basin country below the hills was as nothing compared to the terror of those crag tops where altitude added to the frigidity, and where from mountain peak to mountain peak the blizzard leaped with ever-increasing ferocity. Far out on the level stretches leading up to the plains of Wyoming, other men were working, struggling doggedly from telegraph pole to telegraph pole, in an effort to repair the lines so that connection might be made to Rawlins, and thence to Cheyenne and Denver,—to apprise the world that a great section of the country had been cut off from aid, that women and children were suffering from lack of food, that every day brought the news of a black splotch in the snow,—the form of a man, arms outstretched, face buried in the drift, who had fought and lost. But so far, there had been only failure. It was a struggle that made men grim and dogged; Barry Houston no less than the rest. He had ceased to think of the simpler things of life, of the ordinary problems, the usual worries or likes and dislikes. His path led once by the home of Medaine Robinette, and he clambered toward the little house with little more of feeling than of approaching that of the most unfamiliar ranchman.
Smoke was coming from the chimney. There were the marks of snowshoes. But they might mean nothing in the battle for existence. Houston scrambled up to the veranda and banged on the door. A moment more, and he faced Medaine Robinette.
"Just wanted to see if you're all right," came almost curtly.
"Yes—thank you."
"Need any food?"
"I have plenty."
"Anybody sick?"
"No. Lost Wing has found wood. We're keeping warm. Tell me—" and there was the politeness of emergency in her tones—"is there any need for women in Tabernacle? I am willing to go if—"
"Not yet. Besides, a woman couldn't get in there alone."
"I could. I'm strong enough. Besides, I've been out—I went to the Hurd Ranch yesterday. Mrs. Hurd's sick—Lost Wing brought me the word."
"Then keep on with that. There's nothing in Tabernacle—and no place for any one who isn't destitute. Stay here. Have you food enough for Hurd's?"
"Yes. That is—"
"I'll leave my pack. Take that over as you need it. There's enough for a week there. If things don't let up by that time, I'll be by again."
"Thank you."
Then the door was closed, and Houston went his way again, back to Tabernacle and a fresh supply for his pack—hardly realizing the fact that he had talked to the woman he could not help wishing for—the woman he would have liked to have loved. The world was almost too gray, too grim, too horrible for Houston even to remember that there was an estrangement between them. Dully, his intellect numbed as his body was numbed, he went back to his tasks,—tasks that were seemingly endless.
Day after day, the struggle remained the same, the wind, the snow, the drifts, the white fleece flying on the breast of the gale even when there were no storm clouds above, blotting out the light of the sun and causing the great ball to be only a red, ugly, menacing thing in a field of dismal gray. Night after night the drifts swept, changing, deepening in spots where the ground had been clear before, smoothing over the hummocks, weaving across the country like the vagaries of shifting sands before they finally packed into hard, compressed mounds, to form bulwarks for newer drifts when the next storm came. Day after day,—and then quiet, for forty-eight hours.
It caused men to shout,—men who had cursed the sun in the blazing noonday hours of summer, but men who now extended their arms to it, who slapped one another on the back, who watched the snow with blood-red eyes for the first sign of a melting particle, and who became hysterically jubilant when they saw it. Forty-eight hours! Deeper and deeper went the imprints of milder weather upon the high-piled serrations of white, at last to cease. The sun had faded on the afternoon of the second day. The thaw stopped. The snowshoes soon carried a new crunching sound that gradually became softer, more muffled. For the clouds had come again, the wind had risen with a fiercer bite than ever in it; again the snow was falling. But the grim little army of rescuers, plodding from one ranchhouse to another, had less of worriment in their features now,—even though the situation was no less tense, no less dangerous. At least the meager stores of the small merchandise establishment in Tabernacle could be distributed with more ease; a two-inch crust of snow had formed over the main snowfall, permitting small sleds to be pulled behind struggling men; the world beneath had been frozen in, to give place to a new one above. And with that:
"It's open! It's open!" The shout came from the lips of the telegrapher, waving his arms as he ran from the tunnel that led to the stationhouse. "It's open! I've had Rawlins on the wire!"
Men crowded about him and thumped into the little box car to listen, like children, to the rattling of the telegraph key,—as though they never had heard one before. So soon does civilization feel the need of its inventions, once they are taken away; so soon does the mind become primitive, once the rest of the world has been shut away from it. Eagerly they clustered there, staring with anxious eyes toward the operator as he hammered at the key, talking in whispers lest they disturb him, waiting for his interpretation of the message, like worshippers waiting for the word of an oracle.
"I'm putting it all on the wire!" he announced at last, with feverish intensity. "I'm telling 'em just how it is over here. Maybe they can do something—from Rawlins."
"Rawlins?" Houston had edged forward. "There's not a chance. It's hundreds of miles away; they can't use horses, and they certainly can't walk. Wait—will you give me a chance at something?"
A gleam had come into his eyes. His hands twisted nervously. Voices mumbled about him; suddenly the great hands of Ba'tiste grasped him by the shoulders and literally tossed him toward the telegrapher.
"Ah,oui! If eet is the idea—then speak it."
"Go on—" the telegrapher had stopped his key for a moment—"I'll put it through, if it'll help."
"All right. Get Denver on the wire. Then take this message to every newspaper in the city: