The White Desert Part 27

"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 s.h.i.+eld 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 ma.s.ses 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 pa.s.sing 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.

"G.o.d!"

"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 h.e.l.l 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--"