“I wisht you wasn't so set in your ways,” Shorty demurred. “I'm sure
scairt of that glacier. No man ought to tackle it by his lonely.”
Smoke laughed cheerfully, and ran his eye up the glistening face of
the tiny glacier that filled the head of the valley. “Here it is August
already, and the days have been getting shorter for two months,” he
epitomized the situation. “You know quartz, and I don't. But I can bring
up the grub, while you keep after that mother lode. So-long. I'll be
back by to-morrow evening.”
He turned and started.
“I got a hunch something's goin' to happen,” Shorty pleaded after him.
But Smoke's reply was a bantering laugh. He held on down the little
valley, occasionally wiping the sweat from his forehead, the while his
feet crushed through ripe mountain raspberries and delicate ferns that
grew beside patches of sun-sheltered ice.
In the early spring he and Shorty had come up the Stewart River and
launched out into the amazing chaos of the region where Surprise Lake
lay. And all of the spring and half of the summer had been consumed in
futile wanderings, when, on the verge of turning back, they caught their
first glimpse of the baffling, gold-bottomed sheet of water which had
lured and fooled a generation of miners. Making their camp in the old
cabin which Smoke had discovered on his previous visit, they had learned
three things: first, heavy nugget gold was carpeted thickly on the lake
bottom; next, the gold could be dived for in the shallower portions, but
the temperature of the water was man-killing; and, finally, the draining
of the lake was too stupendous a task for two men in the shorter half
of a short summer. Undeterred, reasoning from the coarseness of the gold
that it had not traveled far, they had set out in search of the mother
lode. They had crossed the big glacier that frowned on the southern rim
and devoted themselves to the puzzling maze of small valleys and canyons
beyond, which, by most unmountainlike methods, drained, or had at one
time drained, into the lake.
The valley Smoke was descending gradually widened after the fashion of
any normal valley; but, at the lower end, it pinched narrowly between
high precipitous walls and abruptly stopped in a cross wall. At the
base of this, in a welter of broken rock, the streamlet disappeared,
evidently finding its way out underground. Climbing the cross wall, from
the top Smoke saw the lake beneath him. Unlike any mountain lake he had
ever seen, it was not blue. Instead, its intense peacock-green tokened
its shallowness. It was this shallowness that made its draining
feasible. All about arose jumbled mountains, with ice-scarred peaks
and crags, grotesquely shaped and grouped. All was topsyturvy and
unsystematic--a Dore nightmare. So fantastic and impossible was it that
it affected Smoke as more like a cosmic landscape-joke than a rational
portion of earth's surface. There were many glaciers in the canyons,
most of them tiny, and, as he looked, one of the larger ones, on the
north shore, calved amid thunders and splashings. Across the lake,
seemingly not more than half a mile, but, as he well knew, five miles
away, he could see the bunch of spruce-trees and the cabin. He looked
again to make sure, and saw smoke clearly rising from the chimney.
Somebody else had surprised themselves into finding Surprise Lake, was
his conclusion, as he turned to climb the southern wall.
From the top of this he came down into a little valley, flower-floored
and lazy with the hum of bees, that behaved quite as a reasonable valley
should, in so far as it made legitimate entry on the lake. What was
wrong with it was its length--scarcely a hundred yards; its head a
straight up-and-down cliff of a thousand feet, over which a stream
pitched itself in descending veils of mist.
And here he encountered more smoke, floating lazily upward in the warm
sunshine beyond an outjut of rock. As he came around the corner he heard
a light, metallic tap-tapping and a merry whistling that kept the beat.
Then he saw the man, an upturned shoe between his knees, into the sole
of which he was driving hob-spikes.
“Hello!” was the stranger's greeting, and Smoke's heart went out to the
man in ready liking. “Just in time for a snack. There's coffee in the
pot, a couple of cold flapjacks, and some jerky.”
“I'll go you if I lose,” was Smoke's acceptance, as he sat down. “I've
been rather skimped on the last several meals, but there's oodles of
grub over in the cabin.”
“Across the lake? That's what I was heading for.”
“Seems Surprise Lake is becoming populous,” Smoke complained, emptying
the coffee-pot.
“Go on, you're joking, aren't you?” the man said, astonishment painted
on his face.
Smoke laughed. “That's the way it takes everybody. You see those high
ledges across there to the northwest? There's where I first saw it. No
warning. Just suddenly caught the view of the whole lake from there. I'd
given up looking for it, too.
“Same here,” the other agreed. “I'd headed back and was expecting to
fetch the Stewart last night, when out I popped in sight of the lake. If
that's it, where's the Stewart? And where have I been all the time? And
how did you come here? And what's your name?”
“Bellew. Kit Bellew.”
“Oh! I know you.” The man's eyes and face were bright with a joyous
smile, and his hand flashed eagerly out to Smoke's. “I've heard all
about you.”
“Been reading police-court news, I see,” Smoke sparred modestly.
“Nope.” The man laughed and shook his head. “Merely recent Klondike
history. I might have recognized you if you'd been shaved. I watched you
putting it all over the gambling crowd when you were bucking roulette
in the Elkhorn. My name's Carson--Andy Carson; and I can't begin to tell
you how glad I am to meet up with you.”
He was a slender man, wiry with health, with quick black eyes and a
magnetism of camaraderie.
“And this is Surprise Lake?” he murmured incredulously.
“It certainly is.”
“And its bottom's buttered with gold?”
“Sure. There's some of the churning.” Smoke dipped in his overalls
pocket and brought forth half a dozen nuggets. “That's the stuff. All
you have to do is go down to bottom, blind if you want to, and pick up a
handful. Then you've got to run half a mile to get up your circulation.”
“Well, gosh-dash my dingbats, if you haven't beaten me to it,” Carson
swore whimsically, but his disappointment was patent. “An' I thought I'd
scooped the whole caboodle. Anyway, I've had the fun of getting here.”
“Fun!” Smoke cried. “Why, if we can ever get our hands on all that
bottom, we'll make Rockefeller look like thirty cents.”
“But it's yours,” was Carson's objection.
“Nothing to it, my friend. You've got to realize that no gold deposit
like it has been discovered in all the history of mining. It will take
you and me and my partner and all the friends we've got to lay our hands
on it. All Bonanza and Eldorado, dumped together, wouldn't be richer
than half an acre down here. The problem is to drain the lake. It will
take millions. And there's only one thing I'm afraid of. There's so
much of it that if we fail to control the output it will bring about the
demonetization of gold.”
“And you tell me--” Carson broke off, speechless and amazed.
“And glad to have you. It will take a year or two, with all the money
we can raise, to drain the lake. It can be done. I've looked over the
ground. But it will take every man in the country that's willing to work
for wages. We'll need an army, and we need right now decent men in on
the ground floor. Are you in?”
“Am I in? Don't I look it? I feel so much like a millionaire that I'm
real timid about crossing that big glacier. Couldn't afford to break my
neck now. Wish I had some more of those hob-spikes. I was just hammering
the last in when you came along. How's yours? Let's see.”
Smoke held up his foot.
“Worn smooth as a skating-rink!” Carson cried. “You've certainly been
hiking some. Wait a minute, and I'll pull some of mine out for you.”
But Smoke refused to listen. “Besides,” he said, “I've got about forty
feet of rope cached where we take the ice. My partner and I used it
coming over. It will be a cinch.”
It was a hard, hot climb. The sun blazed dazzlingly on the ice-surface,
and with streaming pores they panted from the exertion. There were
places, criss-crossed by countless fissures and crevasses, where an hour
of dangerous toil advanced them no more than a hundred yards. At two in
the afternoon, beside a pool of water bedded in the ice, Smoke called a
halt.
“Let's tackle some of that jerky,” he said. “I've been on short
allowance, and my knees are shaking. Besides, we're across the worst.
Three hundred yards will fetch us to the rocks, and it's easy going,
except for a couple of nasty fissures and one bad one that heads us
down toward the bulge. There's a weak ice-bridge there, but Shorty and I
managed it.”
Over the jerky, the two men got acquainted, and Andy Carson unbosomed
himself of the story of his life. “I just knew I'd find Surprise Lake,”
he mumbled in the midst of mouthfuls. “I had to. I missed the French
Hill Benches, the Big Skookum, and Monte Cristo, and then it was
Surprise Lake or bust. And here I am. My wife knew I'd strike it. I've
got faith enough, but hers knocks mine galleywest. She's a corker,
a crackerjack--dead game, grit to her finger-ends, never-say-die, a
fighter from the drop of the hat, the one woman for me, true blue and
all the rest. Take a look at that.”
He sprung open his watch, and on the inside cover Smoke saw the small,
pasted photograph of a bright-haired woman, framed on either side by the
laughing face of a child.
“Boys?” he queried.
“Boy and girl,” Carson answered proudly. “He's a year and a half older.”
He sighed. “They might have been some grown, but we had to wait. You
see, she was sick. Lungs. But she put up a fight. What'd we know
about such stuff? I was clerking, railroad clerk, Chicago, when we got
married. Her folks were tuberculous. Doctors didn't know much in those
days. They said it was hereditary. All her family had it. Caught it from
each other, only they never guessed it. Thought they were born with
it. Fate. She and I lived with them the first couple of years. I
wasn't afraid. No tuberculosis in my family. And I got it. That set me
thinking. It was contagious. I caught it from breathing their air.
“We talked it over, she and I. Then I jumped the family doctor and
consulted an up-to-date expert. He told me what I'd figured out for
myself, and said Arizona was the place for us. We pulled up stakes and
went down--no money, nothing. I got a job sheep-herding, and left her in
town--a lung town. It was filled to spilling with lungers.
“Of course, living and sleeping in the clean open, I started right in
to mend. I was away months at a time. Every time I came back, she was
worse. She just couldn't pick up. But we were learning. I jerked her
out of that town, and she went to sheep-herding with me. In four years,
winter and summer, cold and heat, rain, snow, and frost, and all the
rest, we never slept under a roof, and we were moving camp all the time.
You ought to have seen the change--brown as berries, lean as Indians,
tough as rawhide. When we figured we were cured, we pulled out for San
Francisco. But we were too previous. By the second month we both had
slight hemorrhages. We flew the coop back to Arizona and the sheep. Two
years more of it. That fixed us. Perfect cure. All her family's dead.
Wouldn't listen to us.
“Then we jumped cities for keeps. Knocked around on the Pacific coast
and southern Oregon looked good to us. We settled in the Rogue River
Valley--apples. There's a big future there, only nobody knows it. I got
my land--on time, of course--for forty an acre. Ten years from now it'll
be worth five hundred.
“We've done some almighty hustling. Takes money, and we hadn't a cent
to start with, you know--had to build a house and barn, get horses and
plows, and all the rest. She taught school two years. Then the boy came.
But we've got it. You ought to see those trees we planted--a hundred
acres of them, almost mature now. But it's all been outgo, and the
mortgage working overtime. That's why I'm here. She'd 'a' come along
only for the kids and the trees. She's handlin' that end, and here I am,
a gosh-danged expensive millionaire--in prospect.”
He looked happily across the sun-dazzle on the ice to the green water of
the lake along the farther shore, took a final look at the photograph,
and murmured:
“She's some woman, that. She's hung on. She just wouldn't die, though
she was pretty close to skin and bone all wrapped around a bit of fire
when she went out with the sheep. Oh, she's thin now. Never will be fat.
But it's the prettiest thinness I ever saw, and when I get back, and
the trees begin to bear, and the kids get going to school, she and I
are going to do Paris. I don't think much of that burg, but she's just
hankered for it all her life.”
“Well, here's the gold that will take you to Paris,” Smoke assured him.
“All we've got to do is to get our hands on it.”
Carson nodded with glistening eyes. “Say--that farm of ours is the
prettiest piece of orchard land on all the Pacific coast. Good climate,
too. Our lungs will never get touched again there. Ex-lungers have to be
almighty careful, you know. If you're thinking of settling, well, just
take a peep in at our valley before you settle, that's all. And fishing!
Say!--did you ever get a thirty-five-pound salmon on a six-ounce rod?
Some fight, bo', some fight!”
“I'm lighter than you by forty pounds,” Carson said. “Let me go first.”
They stood on the edge of the crevasse. It was enormous and ancient,
fully a hundred feet across, with sloping, age-eaten sides instead of
sharp-angled rims. At this one place it was bridged by a huge mass of
pressure-hardened snow that was itself half ice. Even the bottom of this
mass they could not see, much less the bottom of the crevasse. Crumbling
and melting, the bridge threatened imminent collapse. There were signs
where recent portions had broken away, and even as they studied it a
mass of half a ton dislodged and fell.
“Looks pretty bad,” Carson admitted with an ominous head-shake. “And it
looks much worse than if I wasn't a millionaire.”
“But we've got to tackle it,” Smoke said. “We're almost across. We can't
go back. We can't camp here on the ice all night. And there's no other
way. Shorty and I explored for a mile up. It was in better shape,
though, when we crossed.”
“It's one at a time, and me first.” Carson took the part coil of rope
from Smoke's hand. “You'll have to cast off. I'll take the rope and the
pick. Gimme your hand so I can slip down easy.”
Slowly and carefully he lowered himself the several feet to the bridge,
where he stood, making final adjustments for the perilous traverse. On
his back was his pack outfit. Around his neck, resting on his shoulders,
he coiled the rope, one end of which was still fast to his waist.
“I'd give a mighty good part of my millions right now for a
bridge-construction gang,” he said, but his cheery, whimsical smile
belied the words. Also, he added, “It's all right; I'm a cat.”
The pick, and the long stick he used as an alpenstock, he balanced
horizontally after the manner of a rope-walker. He thrust one foot
forward tentatively, drew it back, and steeled himself with a visible,
physical effort.
“I wish I was flat broke,” he smiled up. “If ever I get out of being a
millionaire this time, I'll never be one again. It's too uncomfortable.”
“It's all right,” Smoke encouraged. “I've been over it before. Better
let me try it first.”
“And you forty pounds to the worse,” the little man flashed back.
“I'll be all right in a minute. I'm all right now.” And this time the
nerving-up process was instantaneous. “Well, here goes for Rogue River
and the apples,” he said, as his foot went out, this time to rest
carefully and lightly while the other foot was brought up and past. Very
gently and circumspectly he continued on his way until two-thirds of the
distance was covered. Here he stopped to examine a depression he must
cross, at the bottom of which was a fresh crack. Smoke, watching, saw
him glance to the side and down into the crevasse itself, and then begin
a slight swaying.
“Keep your eyes up!” Smoke commanded sharply. “Now! Go on!”
The little man obeyed, nor faltered on the rest of the journey. The
sun-eroded slope of the farther edge of the crevasse was slippery, but
not steep, and he worked his way up to a narrow ledge, faced about, and
sat down.
“Your turn,” he called across. “But just keep a-coming and don't look
down. That's what got my goat. Just keep a-coming, that's all. And get a
move on. It's almighty rotten.”
Balancing his own stick horizontally, Smoke essayed the passage. That
the bridge was on its last legs was patent. He felt a jar under foot, a
slight movement of the mass, and a heavier jar. This was followed by a
single sharp crackle. Behind him he knew something was happening. If for
no other reason, he knew it by the strained, tense face of Carson. From
beneath, thin and faint, came the murmur of running water, and Smoke's
eyes involuntarily wavered to a glimpse of the shimmering depths. He
jerked them back to the way before him. Two-thirds over, he came to the
depression. The sharp edges of the crack, but slightly touched by the
sun, showed how recent it was. His foot was lifted to make the step
across, when the crack began slowly widening, at the same time emitting
numerous sharp snaps. He made the step quickly, increasing the stride
of it, but the worn nails of his shoe skated on the farther slope of the
depression. He fell on his face, and without pause slipped down and
into the crack, his legs hanging clear, his chest supported by the stick
which he had managed to twist crosswise as he fell.
His first sensation was the nausea caused by the sickening up-leap of
his pulse; his first idea was of surprise that he had fallen no farther.
Behind him was crackling and jar and movement to which the stick
vibrated. From beneath, in the heart of the glacier, came the soft and
hollow thunder of the dislodged masses striking bottom. And still the
bridge, broken from its farthest support and ruptured in the middle,
held, though the portion he had crossed tilted downward at a pitch of
twenty degrees. He could see Carson, perched on his ledge, his feet
braced against the melting surface, swiftly recoiling the rope from his
shoulders to his hand.
“Wait!” he cried. “Don't move, or the whole shooting-match will come
down.”
He calculated the distance with a quick glance, took the bandana from
his neck and tied it to the rope, and increased the length by a second
bandana from his pocket. The rope, manufactured from sled-lashings and
short lengths of plaited rawhide knotted together, was both light and
strong. The first cast was lucky as well as deft, and Smoke's fingers
clutched it. He evidenced a hand-over-hand intention of crawling out of
the crack. But Carson, who had refastened the rope around his own waist,
stopped him.
“Make it fast around yourself as well,” he ordered.
“If I go I'll take you with me,” Smoke objected.
The little man became very peremptory.
“You shut up,” he ordered. “The sound of your voice is enough to start
the whole thing going.”
“If I ever start going--” Smoke began.
“Shut up! You ain't going to ever start going. Now do what I say. That's
right--under the shoulders. Make it fast. Now! Start! Get a move on, but
easy as you go. I'll take in the slack. You just keep a-coming. That's
it. Easy. Easy.”
Smoke was still a dozen feet away when the final collapse of the bridge
began. Without noise, but in a jerky way, it crumbled to an increasing
tilt.
“Quick!” Carson called, coiling in hand-over-hand on the slack of the
rope which Smoke's rush gave him.
When the crash came, Smoke's fingers were clawing into the hard face of
the wall of the crevasse, while his body dragged back with the falling
bridge. Carson, sitting up, feet wide apart and braced, was heaving on
the rope. This effort swung Smoke in to the side wall, but it jerked
Carson out of his niche. Like a cat, he faced about, clawing wildly for
a hold on the ice and slipping down. Beneath him, with forty feet of
taut rope between them, Smoke was clawing just as wildly; and ere the
thunder from below announced the arrival of the bridge, both men had
come to rest. Carson had achieved this first, and the several pounds of
pull he was able to put on the rope had helped bring Smoke to a stop.
Each lay in a shallow niche, but Smoke's was so shallow that, tense with
the strain of flattening and sticking, nevertheless he would have slid
on had it not been for the slight assistance he took from the rope.
He was on the verge of a bulge and could not see beneath him. Several
minutes passed, in which they took stock of the situation and made rapid
strides in learning the art of sticking to wet and slippery ice. The
little man was the first to speak.
“Gee!” he said; and, a minute later, “If you can dig in for a moment and
slack on the rope, I can turn over. Try it.”
Smoke made the effort, then rested on the rope again. “I can do it,” he
said. “Tell me when you're ready. And be quick.”
“About three feet down is holding for my heels,” Carson said. “It won't
take a moment. Are you ready?”
“Go on.”
It was hard work to slide down a yard, turn over and sit up; but it was
even harder for Smoke to remain flattened and maintain a position that
from instant to instant made a greater call upon his muscles. As it was,
he could feel the almost perceptible beginning of the slip when the rope
tightened and he looked up into his companion's face. Smoke noted the
yellow pallor of sun-tan forsaken by the blood, and wondered what his
own complexion was like. But when he saw Carson, with shaking fingers,
fumble for his sheath-knife, he decided the end had come. The man was in
a funk and was going to cut the rope.
“Don't m-mind m-m-me,” the little man chattered. “I ain't scared. It's
only my nerves, gosh-dang them. I'll b-b-be all right in a minute.”
And Smoke watched him, doubled over, his shoulders between his knees,
shivering and awkward, holding a slight tension on the rope with one
hand while with the other he hacked and gouged holes for his heels in
the ice.
“Carson,” he breathed up to him, “you're some bear, some bear.”
The answering grin was ghastly and pathetic. “I never could stand
height,” Carson confessed. “It always did get me. Do you mind if I stop
a minute and clear my head? Then I'll make those heel-holds deeper so I
can heave you up.”
Smoke's heart warmed. “Look here, Carson. The thing for you to do is
to cut the rope. You can never get me up, and there's no use both of us
being lost. You can make it out with your knife.”
“You shut up!” was the hurt retort. “Who's running this?”
And Smoke could not help but see that anger was a good restorative
for the other's nerves. As for himself, it was the more nerve-racking
strain, lying plastered against the ice with nothing to do but strive to
stick on.
A groan and a quick cry of “Hold on!” warned him. With face pressed
against the ice, he made a supreme sticking effort, felt the rope
slacken, and knew Carson was slipping toward him. He did not dare look
up until he felt the rope tighten and knew the other had again come to
rest.
“Gee, that was a near go,” Carson chattered. “I came down over a yard.
Now you wait. I've got to dig new holds. If this danged ice wasn't so
melty we'd be hunky-dory.”
Holding the few pounds of strain necessary for Smoke with his left hand,
the little man jabbed and chopped at the ice with his right. Ten minutes
of this passed.
“Now, I'll tell you what I've done,” Carson called down. “I've made
heel-holds and hand-holes for you alongside of me. I'm going to heave
the rope in slow and easy, and you just come along sticking an' not too
fast. I'll tell you what, first of all. I'll take you on the rope and
you worry out of that pack. Get me?”
Smoke nodded, and with infinite care unbuckled his pack-straps. With a
wriggle of the shoulders he dislodged the pack, and Carson saw it slide
over the bulge and out of sight.
“Now, I'm going to ditch mine,” he called down. “You just take it easy
and wait.”
Five minutes later the upward struggle began. Smoke, after drying his
hands on the insides of his arm-sleeves, clawed into the climb--bellied,
and clung, and stuck, and plastered--sustained and helped by the pull
of the rope. Alone, he could not have advanced. Despite his muscles,
because of his forty pounds' handicap, he could not cling as did Carson.
A third of the way up, where the pitch was steeper and the ice less
eroded, he felt the strain on the rope decreasing. He moved slower and
slower. Here was no place to stop and remain. His most desperate effort
could not prevent the stop, and he could feel the down-slip beginning.
“I'm going,” he called up.
“So am I,” was the reply, gritted through Carson's teeth.
“Then cast loose.”
Smoke felt the rope tauten in a futile effort, then the pace quickened,
and as he went past his previous lodgment and over the bulge the last
glimpse he caught of Carson he was turned over, with madly moving hands
and feet striving to overcome the downward draw. To Smoke's surprise, as
he went over the bulge, there was no sheer fall. The rope restrained him
as he slid down a steeper pitch, which quickly eased until he came to a
halt in another niche on the verge of another bulge. Carson was now out
of sight, ensconced in the place previously occupied by Smoke.
“Gee!” he could hear Carson shiver. “Gee!”
An interval of quiet followed, and then Smoke could feel the rope
agitated.
“What are you doing?” he called up.
“Making more hand- and foot-holds,” came the trembling answer. “You just
wait. I'll have you up here in a jiffy. Don't mind the way I talk. I'm
just excited. But I'm all right. You wait and see.”
“You're holding me by main strength,” Smoke argued. “Soon or late, with
the ice melting, you'll slip down after me. The thing for you to do is
to cut loose. Hear me! There's no use both of us going. Get that? You're
the biggest little man in creation, but you've done your best. You cut
loose.”
“You shut up. I'm going to make holes this time deep enough to haul up a
span of horses.”
“You've held me up long enough,” Smoke urged. “Let me go.”
“How many times have I held you up?” came the truculent query.
“Some several, and all of them too many. You've been coming down all the
time.”
“And I've been learning the game all the time. I'm going on holding you
up until we get out of here. Savvy? When God made me a light-weight I
guess he knew what he was about. Now, shut up. I'm busy.”
Several silent minutes passed. Smoke could hear the metallic strike and
hack of the knife and occasional driblets of ice slid over the bulge
and came down to him. Thirsty, clinging on hand and foot, he caught the
fragments in his mouth and melted them to water, which he swallowed.
He heard a gasp that slid into a groan of despair, and felt a slackening
of the rope that made him claw. Immediately the rope tightened again.
Straining his eyes in an upward look along the steep slope, he stared
a moment, then saw the knife, point first, slide over the verge of the
bulge and down upon him. He tucked his cheek to it, shrank from the pang
of cut flesh, tucked more tightly, and felt the knife come to rest.
“I'm a slob,” came the wail down the crevasse.
“Cheer up, I've got it,” Smoke answered.
“Say! Wait! I've a lot of string in my pocket. I'll drop it down to you,
and you send the knife up.”
Smoke made no reply. He was battling with a sudden rush of thought.
“Hey! You! Here comes the string. Tell me when you've got it.”
A small pocket-knife, weighted on the end of the string, slid down the
ice. Smoke got it, opened the larger blade by a quick effort of his
teeth and one hand, and made sure that the blade was sharp. Then he tied
the sheath-knife to the end of the string.
“Haul away!” he called.
With strained eyes he saw the upward progress of the knife. But he saw
more--a little man, afraid and indomitable, who shivered and chattered,
whose head swam with giddiness, and who mastered his qualms and
distresses and played a hero's part. Not since his meeting with Shorty
had Smoke so quickly liked a man. Here was a proper meat-eater, eager
with friendliness, generous to destruction, with a grit that
shaking fear could not shake. Then, too, he considered the situation
cold-bloodedly. There was no chance for two. Steadily, they were sliding
into the heart of the glacier, and it was his greater weight that was
dragging the little man down. The little man could stick like a fly.
Alone, he could save himself.
“Bully for us!” came the voice from above, down and across the bulge of
ice. “Now we'll get out of here in two shakes.”
The awful struggle for good cheer and hope in Carson's voice decided
Smoke.
“Listen to me,” he said steadily, vainly striving to shake the vision of
Joy Gastell's face from his brain. “I sent that knife up for you to get
out with. Get that? I'm going to chop loose with the jack-knife. It's
one or both of us. Get that?”
“Two or nothing,” came the grim but shaky response. “If you'll hold on a
minute--”
“I've held on for too long now. I'm not married. I have no adorable thin
woman nor kids nor apple-trees waiting for me. Get me? Now, you hike up
and out of that!”
“Wait! For God's sake, wait!” Carson screamed down. “You can't do that!
Give me a chance to get you out. Be calm, old horse. We'll make the
turn. You'll see. I'm going to dig holds that'll lift a house and barn.”
Smoke made no reply. Slowly and gently, fascinated by the sight, he cut
with the knife until one of the three strands popped and parted.
“What are you doing?” Carson cried desperately. “If you cut, I'll never
forgive you--never. I tell you it's two or nothing. We're going to get
out. Wait! For God's sake!”
And Smoke, staring at the parted strand, five inches before his eyes,
knew fear in all its weakness. He did not want to die; he recoiled from
the shimmering abyss beneath him, and his panic brain urged all the
preposterous optimism of delay. It was fear that prompted him to
compromise.
“All right,” he called up. “I'll wait. Do your best. But I tell you,
Carson, if we both start slipping again I'm going to cut.”
“Huh! Forget it. When we start, old horse, we start up. I'm a porous
plaster. I could stick here if it was twice as steep. I'm getting a
sizable hole for one heel already. Now, you hush, and let me work.”
The slow minutes passed. Smoke centered his soul on the dull hurt of
a hang-nail on one of his fingers. He should have clipped it away that
morning--it was hurting then--he decided; and he resolved, once clear
of the crevasse, that it should immediately be clipped. Then, with
short focus, he stared at the hang-nail and the finger with a new
comprehension. In a minute, or a few minutes at best, that hang-nail,
that finger, cunningly jointed and efficient, might be part of a mangled
carcass at the bottom of the crevasse. Conscious of his fear, he
hated himself. Bear-eaters were made of sterner stuff. In the anger of
self-revolt he all but hacked at the rope with his knife. But fear
made him draw back the hand and to stick himself again, trembling and
sweating, to the slippery slope. To the fact that he was soaking wet
by contact with the thawing ice he tried to attribute the cause of his
shivering; but he knew, in the heart of him, that it was untrue.
A gasp and a groan and an abrupt slackening of the rope, warned him. He
began to slip. The movement was very slow. The rope tightened loyally,
but he continued to slip. Carson could not hold him, and was slipping
with him. The digging toe of his farther-extended foot encountered
vacancy, and he knew that it was over the straight-away fall. And he
knew, too, that in another moment his falling body would jerk Carson's
after it.
Blindly, desperately, all the vitality and life-love of him beaten down
in a flashing instant by a shuddering perception of right and wrong,
he brought the knife-edge across the rope, saw the strands part, felt
himself slide more rapidly, and then fall.
What happened then, he did not know. He was not unconscious, but it
happened too quickly, and it was unexpected. Instead of falling to his
death, his feet almost immediately struck in water, and he sat violently
down in water that splashed coolingly on his face. His first impression
was that the crevasse was shallower than he had imagined and that he
had safely fetched bottom. But of this he was quickly disabused. The
opposite wall was a dozen feet away. He lay in a basin formed in an
out-jut of the ice-wall by melting water that dribbled and trickled over
the bulge above and fell sheer down a distance of a dozen feet. This had
hollowed out the basin. Where he sat the water was two feet deep, and
it was flush with the rim. He peered over the rim and looked down the
narrow chasm hundreds of feet to the torrent that foamed along the
bottom.
“Oh, why did you?” he heard a wail from above.
“Listen,” he called up. “I'm perfectly safe, sitting in a pool of water
up to my neck. And here's both our packs. I'm going to sit on them.
There's room for a half-dozen here. If you slip, stick close and
you'll land. In the meantime you hike up and get out. Go to the cabin.
Somebody's there. I saw the smoke. Get a rope, or anything that will
make rope, and come back and fish for me.”
“Honest!” came Carson's incredulous voice.
“Cross my heart and hope to die. Now, get a hustle on, or I'll catch my
death of cold.”
Smoke kept himself warm by kicking a channel through the rim with the
heel of his shoe. By the time he had drained off the last of the water,
a faint call from Carson announced that he had reached the top.
After that Smoke occupied himself with drying his clothes. The late
afternoon sun beat warmly in upon him, and he wrung out his garments
and spread them about him. His match-case was water-proof, and he
manipulated and dried sufficient tobacco and rice-paper to make
cigarettes.
Two hours later, perched naked on the two packs and smoking, he heard a
voice above that he could not fail to identify.
“Oh, Smoke! Smoke!”
“Hello, Joy Gastell!” he called back. “Where'd you drop from?”
“Are you hurt?”
“Not even any skin off!”
“Father's paying the rope down now. Do you see it?”
“Yes, and I've got it,” he answered. “Now, wait a couple of minutes,
please.”
“What's the matter?” came her anxious query, after several minutes. “Oh,
I know, you're hurt.”
“No, I'm not. I'm dressing.”
“Dressing?”
“Yes. I've been in swimming. Now! Ready? Hoist away!”
He sent up the two packs on the first trip, was consequently rebuked by
Joy Gastell, and on the second trip came up himself.
Joy Gastell looked at him with glowing eyes, while her father and Carson
were busy coiling the rope. “How could you cut loose in that splendid
way?” she cried. “It was--it was glorious, that's all.”
Smoke waved the compliment away with a deprecatory hand.
“I know all about it,” she persisted. “Carson told me. You sacrificed
yourself to save him.”
“Nothing of the sort,” Smoke lied. “I could see that swimming-pool right
under me all the time.”