THE BLIZZARD
At eleven o'clock in the morning Bill Carmody ordered his teams to the
stables.
At twelve o'clock, when the men crowded into the grub-shack, the air
was filled with fine particles of flinty snow, and the roar of the wind
through the pine-tops was the mighty roar of the surf of a pounding
sea.
At one o'clock the boss called "gillon," and with loud shouts and rough
horse-play, the men made a rush for the bunk-house.
At two o'clock Daddy Dunnigan thrust his head through the doorway of
the shop where Bill, under the blacksmith's approving eye, was
completing a lesson in the proper welding of the broken link of a log
chain.
With a mysterious quirk of the head he motioned the foreman to follow,
and led the way to the cook-shack, where Blood River Jack waited with
lowering brow.
"D'yez happin to know is th' b'y up yonder?" asked the old Irishman,
with a jerk of his thumb in the direction of the house. Bill beat the
dry snow from his clothing as he stared from one to the other.
"The boy!" he cried. "What do you mean? Come--out with it--_quick_!"
"It is that my rifle and belt have gone from under the bunk," Blood
River Jack answered. "They were taken while I slept. The boy did not
come to dinner in the grub-shack. Is it that he eats to-day with his
people?"
"Good Lord! I don't know! Haven't you seen him, Daddy?"
"Not since mebbe it's noine o'clock in th' marnin', an' he wint to th'
bunk-house. I thoucht he wuz wid Jack." Bill thought rapidly and turned
to the old man.
"Here, you, Daddy--get a move on now!" he ordered. "That ginger cake of
yours that the kid likes, hustle some of it into a pail or a basket or
something, and carry it up to the house. Tell them it's for Charlie,
and you'll find out if he's there. If not, get out by saying that he's
probably in the bunk-house, and get back here as quick as you can make
it. There is no use in alarming the people up there--yet."
"Here you, Jack, go help the old man along. It's a tough job bucking
that storm even for a short distance. Come now, beat it!"
After ten minutes the two returned, breathless from their short battle
with the storm.
"He ain't there," gasped the old man and sank down upon the wood-box
with his head in his hands. "God help um, he's out in ut!"
"I'm going to the office," said the foreman and stepped out into the
whirling snow.
"Man! Man!" called Daddy, springing to his feet; "ye ain't a goin' to
thry----" The door banged upon his words and he sagged slowly onto his
rough seat.
A few minutes later Appleton stamped into the cook-shack. "Did you find
him, Daddy?" he asked.
The old man shook his head. "He ain't in th' camp," he muttered. "He
tuk Jack's gun whilst he slep' an' ut's huntin' he's gone--Lard hilp
um!"
"Where is Bill?" the lumberman inquired.
"Av ye're quick, ye may catch um in th' office--av ye ain't Oi'm
thinkin' ye niver will foind um. Be th' luk in his eye, he's gone
afther th' b'y."
The lumberman plunged again into the storm and made his way to the
office. It was empty. As he turned heavily away the door opened and
Ethel Manton flung herself into the room, gasping with exertion. Giving
no heed to her uncle's presence, the girl's glance hurriedly swept the
interior.
Her hand clutched at the bosom of her snow-powdered coat as she noted
that the faded mackinaw was gone from its accustomed peg and the
snowshoes from their corner behind the door.
Instantly the truth flashed through her brain--Charlie was lost in the
seething blizzard and somewhere out in the timber Bill Carmody was
searching for him.
With a smothered moan she flung herself onto the bunk and buried her
face in the blankets.
* * * * *
The situation the foreman faced when he plunged into the whirling
blizzard in search of the boy, while calling for the utmost in man's
woodsmanship and endurance, was not so entirely hopeless as would
appear. He remembered the intense interest evinced by the boy a few
days before, when he had listened to the description of the rocky ledge
which was the home of the _loup-cerviers_, and the eagerness with which
he begged to visit the place.
What was more natural, he argued, than that the youngster, finding
himself in unexpected possession of a rifle and ammunition, had decided
to explore the spot and do a little hunting on his own account?
The full fury of the storm had not broken until noon, and he figured
that the boy would have had ample time to reach the bluff where he
could find temporary shelter among the numerous caves of its rocky
formation.
Upon leaving the office, the boss headed straight for the rollway, and
the mere holding his direction taxed his brain to the exclusion of all
other thoughts.
The air was literally filled with flying snow fine as dust, which
formed an opaque screen through which his gaze penetrated scarcely an
arm's reach.
Time and again he strayed from the skidway and brought up sharply
against a tree, but each time he altered his course and floundered
ahead until he found himself suddenly upon the steep slope where the
bank inclined to the river.
When Bill Carmody turned down-stream the gravity of his undertaking
forced itself upon him. The fury of the storm was like nothing he had
ever experienced.
The wind-whipped particles cut and seared his face like a shower of
red-hot needles, and the air about him was filled with a dull roar,
mighty in volume but strangely muffled by the very denseness of the
snow.
It took all his strength to push himself forward against the terrific
force of the wind which seemed to sweep from every quarter at once into
a whirling vortex of which he himself was the center.
One moment the air was sucked from his lungs by a mighty vacuum, and
the next the terrible compression upon his chest caused him to gasp for
breath.
The fine snow that he inhaled with each breath stung his lungs and he
tied his heavy woolen muffler across his mouth. He stumbled frequently
and floundered about to regain his balance. He lost all sense of
direction and fought blindly on, each bend of the river bringing him
blunderingly against one or the other of its brush-grown banks.
The only thought of his benumbed brain was to make the rock ledge
somewhere ahead. It grew dark, and the blackness, laden with the
blinding, stinging particles, added horror to his bewilderment.
Suddenly his snowshoe struck against a hard object, and he pitched
heavily forward upon his face and lay still. He realized then that he
was tired.
Never in his life had he been so utterly body-weary, and the snow was
soft--soft and warm--and the pelting ceased.
He thrust his arm forward into a more comfortable position and
encountered a rock, and sluggishly through his benumbed faculties
passed a train of associated ideas--rock, rock ledge, _loup-cerviers_,
the boy! With a mighty effort he roused himself from the growing
lethargy and staggered blindly to his feet.
He filled his lungs, tore the ice-incrusted muffler from his lips and,
summoning all his strength, gave voice to the long call of the woods:
"Who-o-o-p-e-e-e!"
But the cry was cut off at his lips. The terrific force of the shifting
gusts hurled the sound back into his throat so that it came to his own
ears faint and far. Again and again he called, and each time the feeble
effort was drowned in the dull roar of the storm.
An unreasoning rage at the futility of it overcame him and he plunged
blindly ahead, unheeding, stumbling, falling, rising to his feet and
staggering among the tumbled rocks at the foot of the bluff--and then
almost in his ear came the sharp, quick sound of a rifle-shot and
another and another, at a second apart--the distress signal of the
Northland.