A warning chinook wind had melted some of the snow, but before its task
was completed the wind swung a few points north, and smoke-hued clouds
shoved up across the skyline, spreading like a pall across the blue sky.
Snow, fine and hard as specks of ice, filled the air. The mercury
dropped to ten below zero.
The wether band fed into the wind for two hours, then balked. Humped up
in the lee of the rocks, the sheep stood there in stupid, stubborn
bunches. The dogs barked and snapped at their heels. Two Dog hobbled
about, slapping his arms to keep warm. And when he saw the futility of
trying to make his sheep graze north, he gave it up and hobbled over
toward the head of the Grouse Gulch hill. He had kept close tabs on Jerk
Line’s trips and he knew that the freight outfit was about due.
When he reached the grade he stared in scowling silence at the frozen,
ice-glazed ruts. Dangerous at any time, that road was little more than a
devil’s slide this morning. Icy, slippery, treacherous.
“Smith’ll have to put rough locks on his wheels,” he mused. “Them brakes
o’ his needs new shoes. Wore bad, last trip. Rough locks. Hug the bank
clost. Take ’er slow, an’ he’ll make ’er. If them brakes slip on this
hill, he’ll....”
A shudder swept his little frame. He was thinking of that trail wagon,
piled with powder cases.
Out of the gray morning came the distant sound of bells. Clear and
sweet, like Christmas bells. To little Two Dog they were voices. Just
like the voices of fairies. “A-callin’ fer him.”
Two Dog scurried to a brush thicket beside the frozen road, ten feet
above the road level, on the slope of the hill. He could lean over and
spit down on the road.
Then, up over the brow of a low rise, came the freight outfit. Black
Jack and Monte, the two black leaders, leaning into their padded
collars, their bells chiming. The other teams, plodding behind. The high
boxed wagons, lurching and swaying. The dingy tarp-covered caboose. Jerk
Line, walking alongside the lead wagon to keep warm. In grease-caked
overalls and torn, faded mackinaw, his blue flannel shirt open at the
throat. Beating his chapped, gloveless hands across his barrel chest.
His blacksnake hung across his shoulders. Walking with bent-over
shoulders, as if he carried a heavy pack, his bearded chin sunk on his
chest. A little unsteady from too much whisky and too little decent
grub. Mumbling into his matted beard.
Plodding along. The wide tires creaking dismally on the frozen snow.
Coming on at a dogged, sullen pace, slantwise to the bitter wind.
Without a swamper. The trail wagon loaded high with powder.
And when the swing teams were directly under Two Dog’s hiding place, the
wise leaders slacked to a halt. The other teams halted in unison and
stood there. Jerk Line looked up as if waking from a dream; as if he did
not quite realize where he was. He passed a reddened, calloused hand
across his eyes, then reached into the jockey box.
“Reachin’ fer his rough lock chains,” nodded Two Dog.
But when the freighter’s hand came out of the box, it held a jug.
Uncorking the jug with his teeth, he spat out the cork and tipped up the
jug. For the space of ten long seconds, Jerk Line let the whisky gurgle
down his throat. When the jug came away from his bearded lips, he picked
the cork out of the snow and with a sort of fumbling movement replaced
the jug. Again his hand passed across his eyes, as if he tried to wipe
away a curtain or film that clouded his vision. Then he stumbled with a
faltering step back along the wagon.
The brake poles, made of seasoned birch, were equipped with ropes. To
set the brakes you pulled the rope taut and tied it to a steel brace up
forward. Jerk Line set the two brakes in a haphazard fashion. Instead of
a bowline knot, he merely gave the ropes a couple of half hitches and a
twist. Two Dog, watching every move, choked back a little groan. And
when Jerk Line mounted his wheel horse, the little watcher clapped a
mittened hand across his mouth to smother the cry that came to his
throat.
“Tighten up, thar!” roared Jerk Line. Chains rattled taut. Brakes
creaked. The wagons lurched forward.
Two Dog shivered in terror, a thin, whispering scream tearing from his
tight throat. But Jerk Line did not hear. Two Dog saw the front brake
rope give, slacking off under the strain. The second rope jerked loose.
The heavy wagons rolled forward toward the brink of the hill. Jerk Line,
loaded with powder, was starting down that pitch with no brakes!
Two Dog, pasty white, leaped like an animal, landing in a heap on the
first wagon. Half crawling, he scrambled across the load to the brake
rope, just as the wagon reached the pitch of the hill. The rear wagon,
still on level ground, held it back. Two Dog reached for the rope as the
wagon rolled against the wheel team. The horses, sensing danger, jumped
a little, then leaned back against the breeching.
Jerk Line seemed to wake from a stupor. He stiffened in the saddle, cast
a swift, furtive look back at the towering load that was not holding.
Then he roared a hoarse, screaming shout at the horses. His blacksnake
cracked like pistol shots. The long team, frightened at the terror in
the man’s voice, leaped forward.
In split second movements, Two Dog swung his weight on the brake rope.
The brake shoes smoked, screamed, then held the wide tires in a tight
grip. Two Dog, with deft, swift hitches, made fast the rope and knotted
it. Then he leaped to the ground, was saved by a miracle from death
under the wheels of the second wagon, and scrambled up over the end gate
of the trail wagon, grasping at the dangling rope.
“Gawd! Gawd! Gawd!”
No prayer of man ever held more pitiful entreaty, more blind faith, more
stark terror. And as if in answer to his screaming prayer, his hands
found the rope.
The little fellow’s weight was puny against the strain of the load that
was rolling the huge wheels. He cast a panicky glance about for some
object that was solid. Something to throw a hitch around and take up the
slack. His eyes fell on a thick iron brace that spanned the sides of the
wagon-box. Two Dog threw a hitch about it, then threw his weight against
the rope, his feet braced, every muscle straining.
Jerk Line’s blacksnake spat and popped. His hoarse screams goaded the
terrified horses. They broke into a trot. Faster. Every second courting
a pile-up. For if the long, jointed bars that served as a wagon tongue
ever slacked and a horse became tangled in the stretchers and lead bars,
the whole outfit would pile up in a snarl of mangled flesh. Wagons,
horses and men broken and smashed, jerked over the edge and down that
hundred feet of boulders. And the trail wagon piled with high explosive
powder.
Then, with a horrible squeal the brake blocks of the trail wagon took
hold. The momentum of the loads slacked. And as the stridor of the brake
shoes smothered to a low moan, Two Dog’s voice traveled out of the
rattling chains, along the line of fear stricken horses.
“Steady, boys. Easy, babies. Whoa, babies. Whoa, now. Whoa!”
Crooning, calling, talking to them as a mother soothes the fright of her
children.
* * * * *
Jerk Line heard it and thought that he had gone clear mad. But he felt
the horses slacken to a walk. He knew that some miracle had checked the
momentum of the wagons. His hand, shaking as if with palsy, made that
queer, brushing motion across his eyes. Then something inside him seemed
to break and he swayed in his saddle, tears streaming down into his
matted beard, sobs shaking his big frame. But the hands that handled the
jerk line were mechanical, sure, skilled even after the man’s brain had
quit. And so Jerk Line Smith rode down the Grouse Gulch hill. And when
the outfit was again on level ground and the horses stood quiet, he
still sat in the saddle, sobbing and laughing. Crazy. Crazy from pain
and liquor and lack of decent grub. And blind. Snow blind since the day
before yesterday.
But out of that babbling delirium and red black of snow blindness Jerk
Line recognized Two Dog and clung to him, sobbing like a baby. While Two
Dog, laughing through tears of sheer happiness, put his partner to bed
in the caboose. Ten minutes after Two Dog had Jerk Line’s clothes off
and had put him to bed, the freighter dropped into a heavy sleep.
Two Dog unhooked the teams, chuckling and talking to each horse as he
unbuckled their harness and fastened on nose bags and hobbles.
“Yep, by gravy, it’s ol’ Two Dog come back, babies. Gol damn your gosh
darned hungry hides. Know me, don’t you? I’ll tell a wet hen. Quit
nibblin’ at a man’s duds. Here’s grain till hell’s no more. A extry
hatful. An’ I’m tellin’ you, ponies, tomorrow is gonna come Sunday.
We’re declarin’ ’er a holiday. Gotta nuss ol’ Jerk Line. He’s got ’em
shore bad this time. Loco as hell. Gotta lay over an’ touch up this
harness some. Looky at them bells! Gawd A’mighty, what a mess!”
When the camp tender came along, Two Dog turned over his sheep.
“Got a sick man in yonder caboose. I’m quittin’. Yep, goin’ back to
freightin’.”
“What’s them cases you’re unloadin’, Two Dog?” asked the camp tender who
had replaced the Swede a few weeks ago.
“Powder,” said Two Dog grimly, as he carefully carried a case away from
the wagons and placed it gently on top of a pile fifty feet away.
“What’s the idee in unloadin’ it here?”
“Me’n’ Jerk Line has quit haulin’ powder. I aim to tell him so when he
comes outa it.”
But it was none other than Jerk Line himself who grinned weakly out of
his delirium, and made the flat statement that he’d never haul another
ounce of powder.
“Fu’thermore, Two Dog, I’m tyin’ you up so’s you can’t quit me, never no
more. I’m makin’ you half owner. Half owner, hear that, you gosh darned
li’l ol’ son of a gun?”
* * * * *
Two weeks later the freight outfit was again in Chinook after a load.
Dutch John and Big Fred and the others had held a conference. The six
horse outfit was taken off the road.
“All that was wrong with Jerk Line, he was just nacherally homesick fer
Two Dog. Who’d uh guessed it? Homesick!”
Once more Jerk Line Smith addressed the crowded bar at the Bloody Heart
Saloon, while outside the freight team, bells and buckles shining in the
sun, waited lazily.
“Mud? I’ll tell a stranger! I see’s a hat layin’ on top o’ the mud. Good
hat. When I picks ’er up, danged if there ain’t a man under it.”
“‘Mister,’ says I, ‘I’ll git my shovel an’ dig you out.’
“‘You needn’t bother,’ says he. I’ll be out directly. I got a stout hoss
under me!”
Jerk Line turned to his swamper.
“Recollect that day?”
“I’ll tell a man I do, Jerk Line. It was the summer of ’81. The summer
o’ the blue snow.”
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