The White Desert Part 33

"Are you afraid--of yourself?"

"No. Only men with something on their conscience are afraid."

She looked at him queerly, then turned away. Houston again took the lead, rounding the stretches, then waiting for her, halting at the dangerous gulleys and guiding her safely across, but silently. He had said enough; more would require explanations. And there was a pack upon his back which contained a tiny form with tight-curled hands, with eyes that were closed,--a poor, nameless little thing he had sworn to carry to grace and to protection. At last they reached the cabins.

Houston untied the bond which connected them and loosened his snowshoes, that he might plunge into the smallest drift before a door and force his way within. There was no wood; he tore the clapboards from a near-by cabin and the tar paper from the wind-swept roof. Five minutes later a fire was booming; a girl tired, bent-shouldered, her eyes drooping from a sudden desire for sleep, huddled near it. Houston walked to the pack and took food.

"You would rather eat alone?"

"Yes."

"I shall be in the next cabin--awake."

"Awake?"

"Yes. I'd rather--keep watch."

"But there is nothing--"

"Illness--a snowslide--a fresh drift. I would feel easier in mind.

Good night."

Then with his snowshoes and his pack of death, he went out the door, to plunge through another drift, to force his way into a cabin, and there, a plodding, dumb figure, go soddenly about the duties of comfort. And more than once in the howling, bl.u.s.tery night which followed, Houston s.h.i.+vered, shook himself into action and rose to rebuild a fire that had died while he had sat hunched in the hard, uncomfortable chair beside it, trying to fathom what the day had meant, striving to hope for the keeping of the promises that an hysterical woman had made, struggling for the strength to go on,--on with this cheery, brave little bit of humanity in the next cabin, without a word in self-extenuation, without a hint to break the lack of estimation in which she held him, without a plea in his own defense. And some way, Houston felt that such a plea now would be cheap and tawdry; they were in a world where there were bigger things than human aims and human frailties. Besides, he had locked his lips at the command of a grief-ridden woman. To open them in self-extenuation would mean that she must be brought into it; for she had been the one who had clinched the points of suspicion in the mind of Medaine Robinette. Were he now to speak of proof that she had lied--

It was impossible. The wind-swept night became wind-swept dawn, to find him still huddled there, still thinking, still grim and drawn and haggard with sleeplessness and fatigue. Then he rose at a call from without:

"Are you ready?"

He affixed the pack. Together they went on again, graceless figures in frozen clothing, she pointing the way, he aiding her with his strength, in the final battle toward the summit of the range,--and Crestline.

Hours they plodded and climbed, climbed and plodded, the blood again dripping from his lips, her features again s.h.i.+elded by the heavy folds of the bandanna; the moisture of their breath at times swirling about them like angry steam, at others invisible in the areas of sudden dryness, where the atmosphere lapped up even the vapors of laboring lungs before it could visualize. Snow and cloud and rising walls of granite: this was their world, and they crawling pigmies within it.

Once she brushed against the pack on his back and drew away with a sudden recoil. Houston dully realized the reason. The selfish, gripping hands of Winter, holding nothing sacred, had invaded even there.

Noon. And a half-cry from both of them, a burst of energy which soon faded. For above was Crestline--even as the little Croatian settlement had been--smokeless, lifeless. They had gone from here also, hurrying humans fleeing with the last snowplow before the tempest, beings afraid to remain, once the lines of communication were broken. But there was nothing to do but go on.

Roofless houses met them, stacks of crumpled snow, where the beams had cracked beneath the weight of high piled drifts; staring, gla.s.sless windows and rooms filled with white; stoves that no longer fought the clasp of winter but huddled instead amid piles of snow; that was all.

Crestline had fled; there was no life, no sound, only the angry, wailing cry of the wind through half-frozen roof spouts, the slap of clattering boards, loosened by the storm. Gloomily Houston surveyed the desolate picture, at last to turn to the girl.

"I must go on. I gave my promise."

She nodded.

"It means Tollifer now. The descent is more dangerous."

"Do you know it?"

"Not as well as the other. If I only had something to guide me."

And as if in answer, the storm lifted for a moment. Gradually the wind stilled, in one of those stretches of calm which seem to be only the breeding spots of more terror, more bitterness. But they gave no heed to that, nor to the red ball of the sun, faintly visible through the clouds. Far below, miles in reality, straight jets of steam rose high above black, curling smoke; faintly, distantly, whistles sounded. The snowplows!

He gripped her arm with the sight of it, nor did she resist. Thrilled, enthralled, they watched it: the whirling smoke, the shooting steam, the white spray which indicated the grinding, churning progress of the plows, propelled by the heavy engines behind. Words came from the swollen lips of Houston, but the voice was hoa.r.s.e, strained, unnatural:

"They've started the fight! They've--"

"It's on the second grade, up from Tollifer. It's fairly easy there, you know, for ten or twelve miles. They're making that without difficulty--their work won't come until they strike the snowsheds at Crystal Lake. Oh--" and there was in the voice all the yearning, the anxiety that a pent-up soul could know--"I wish I were a man now! I wish I were a man--to help!"

"I hope--" and Houston said it without thought of bravado--"that I may have the strength for both of us. I'm a man--after a sort. I'm going to work with them."

"But--"

He knew what she meant and shook his head.

"No--she does not need me. My presence would mean nothing to her. I can't tell you why. My place--is down there."

For an instant Medaine Robinette looked at him with frankly questioning eyes, eyes which told that a thought was beginning to form somewhere back in her brain, a question arising as to his guilt in at least one of the things which circ.u.mstances had arrayed against him. Some way Barry felt that she knew that a man willing to encounter the dangers of a snowy range would hurry again to the side of the woman for whom he had dared them, unless-- But suddenly she was speaking, as though to divert her thoughts.

"We'll have about three hours--from the looks of the sky. Unless conditions change quickly, there'll not be another blow before night.

It's our chance. We'd better cut this cord--the one in the lead may fall and pull the other one over. We had better make haste."

Houston stepped before her. A moment later they were edging their way down the declivity of what once had been a railroad track, at last to veer. The drifts from the mountain side had become too sharp; it was easier to accept the more precipitous and shorter journey, straight downward, the nearest cut toward those welcome spires of smoke.

Gradually the snow shook or was melted from their clothing, through sheer bodily warmth. Black dots they became,--dots which appeared late in the afternoon to the laboring crews of the snow-fighters far below; dots which appeared and disappeared, edging their way about beetling precipices, plunging forward, then stopping; pulling themselves out of the heavier drifts, where drops of ten and even twenty feet had thrown them; swinging and tacking; scrambling downward in long, almost running descents, then crawling slowly along the ice walls, while the jutting peaks about them seemed to close them in, seemed to threaten and seek to engulf them in their pitfalls, only to break from them at last and allow them once more to resume their journey.

Breaks and stops, falls and plunges into drift after drift; through the gla.s.ses the workers below could see that a man was in the lead, with something strapped to his back, which the woman in the rear adjusted now and then, when it became partially displaced by the plunging journey. Banks of snow cut them off; snowshoes sank in air pockets--holes made by protruding limbs of the short, gnarled trees of timber line,--and through these the man fought in short, spasmodic lunges, breaking the way for the woman who came behind, never stopping except to gather strength for a fresh attack, never ceasing for obstacle or for danger. Once, at the edge of an overhanging ledge, he scrambled furiously, failed and fell,--to drop in a drift far below, to crawl painfully back to the waiting dot above, and to guide her, by safer paths, on downward. Hours! The dots grew larger. The gla.s.ses no longer were needed. On they came, stumbling, reeling, at last to stagger across the frozen, wind-swept surface of a small lake and toward the bunk cars of the snow crews. The woman wavered and fell; he caught her. Then double-weighted, a pack on his back, a form in his arms, he came on, his blood-red eyes searching almost sightlessly the faces of the waiting, stolid, grease-smeared men, his thick voice drooling over b.l.o.o.d.y lips:

"Somebody take her--get her into the bunk cars. She's given out.

I'm-- I'm all right. Take care of her. I've got to go on--to Tollifer!"

CHAPTER XXII

It was night when Barry Houston limped, muscles cramped and frost-numbed, into the little undertaking shop at Tollifer and deposited his tiny burden. Medaine Robinette had remained behind in the rough care of the snow crews, while he, revived by steaming coffee and hot food, had been brought down on a smaller snowplow, running constantly, and without extra power, between Tollifer and "the front", that the lines of communication be kept open.

"Nameless," he said with an effort, when the lengthy details of certification were asked. "The mother--" and a necessary lie came to his lips--"became unconscious before she could tell me anything except that the baby had been baptized and called Helena. She wanted a priest."

"I'll look after it. There's clothing?"

"Yes. In the pack. But wait--where does the Father live?"

The man pointed the way. Houston went on--to a repet.i.tion of his story and a fulfillment of his duties. Then, from far up the mountain side, there came the churning, grinding sound of the snowplow, and he hurried toward the station house to greet it. There on a spur, in the faint glow of an electric light, a short train was side-tracked, engineless, waiting until the time should come when the road again would be open, and the way over the Pa.s.s free. One glance told him what it was: the tarpaulin-covered, snow-s.h.i.+elded, bulky forms of his machinery,--machinery that he now felt he could personally aid to its destination. For there was work ahead. Midnight found him in a shack buried in snow and reached only by a circuitous tunnel, a shack where men--no longer Americans, but black-smeared, red-eyed, doddering, stumbling human machines--came and went, their frost-caked Mackinaws steaming as they cl.u.s.tered about the red-hot stove, their faces smudged with engine grease to form a coating against the stinging blast of the ice-laden wind, their cheeks raw and bleeding, their mouths swollen orifices which parted only for mumblings; vikings of another age, the fighters of the ice gangs, of which Houston had become a part.

The floor was their bed; silently, speaking only for the purpose of curses, they gulped the food that was pa.s.sed out to them, taking the steaming coffee straight down in spite of its burning clutch at tender membranes, gnawing and tearing at their meal like beasts at the kill, then, still wadded in their clothing, sinking to the floor--and to sleep. The air was rancid with the odor of wet, steaming clothing.

Men crawled over one another, then dropped to the first open spot, to flounder there a moment, then roar in snoring sleep. Against the wall a bearded giant half leaned, half lay, one tooth touching the ragged lips and breaking the filmy skin, while the blood dripped, slow drop after slow drop, upon his black, tousled beard. But he did not wake.

Of them all, only Houston, tired even as they were tired, yet with something that they had forgotten, a brain, remained open-eyed. What had become of Medaine? Had she recovered? Had she too gone to Tollifer, perhaps on a later trip of the plow? The thoughts ran through his head like the repet.i.tion of some weird refrain. He sought sleep in vain. From far away came the whistles of locomotives, answering the signals of the snowplows ahead. Outside some one shouted, as though calling to him; again he remembered the bulky cars of machinery at Tollifer. It was partially, at least, his battle they were fighting out there, while he remained inactive. He rose and sought the door, fumbling aimlessly in his pockets for his gloves.

Something tinkled on the floor as he brought them forth, and he bent to pick up the little crucifix with its twisted, tangled chain, forgotten at Tollifer. Dully, hazily, he stared at it with his red eyes, with the faint feeling of a duty neglected. Then: