THE RESULTS OF A SNOW-SLIDE.
Dr. Ambrose and I stuck together, picking our way through the storm.
Snow-covered mountains under an angry sky are not a cheerful prospect,
and the work was fearfully tiresome. Down my boot would crush under
my weight through a foot of snow, and to lift it out again was like
drawing a wedge from a log.
It was winter, but I grew hot, and my brow produced sweat. My breath
shortened, and my muscles said they were tired. The doctor noticed me.
"You'd better go back, Mr. West," he said. "This is very exhausting
business for one who is not used to it."
But I was a bit ashamed of playing out so soon, and insisted upon going
on. He said nothing then, but when he raised the question a half-hour
later I was forced to confess that he was right. A tuckered-out man was
of no use on such a trail.
"You'd better go straight back to the camp, and I've no doubt you'll
find one or two there who played out before you did," he said.
Leaving him regretfully, I faced about and began to plough my way
through the snow on the return journey. I had noted the landmarks
well, and recognized them easily. The snow, still falling, had buried
all trace of our footsteps under two or three inches of white. I
tugged along with a fair degree of patience, wishing at the same
time that I was back at the camp, drying my boots and drinking a hot
toddy,--unpicturesque but pleasant occupations. But walking beat
wishing, and at last I saw the smoke of our camp-fire over a hill.
I increased my speed, trying to make a run through the deep snow. I
passed near the edge of a cliff, but no nearer than we had gone when
we started on the search. I forgot that the snow had grown deeper and
more weight was pressing down upon the slopes. When I was nearest the
edge the snow seemed to slip from under my feet; the mountain tilted up
at a new angle; there was the rumble of tons of snow sliding over the
steeps, and away it went in a huge white avalanche, bearing me, who had
started it, upon its crest, sick with sudden fear.
The itch of life was in my fingers; it, and no thought of mine,
made me reach out and grasp at the sturdy shrubs which grew on the
mountain-side. With each hand full, I hung on, and shouted and kicked.
Big waves of snow tumbled over me and loosened my arms in their
sockets, but I swung to my brave bushes until I had received my last
douse of snow and the slope was swept clean.
I managed to get my toes into a cleft, and my arms felt better. My head
was beginning to think and come to the relief of instinct. I saw that I
was about ten feet from the crest of the cliff; which was not far, but
too far. I tried to draw myself up by the bushes, but I was no sailor,
and I failed. Then I shouted with all my might. I had seen the smoke of
the camp just before my fall, and I hoped my voice would reach the men
there. I never knew before that I had such a good voice.
"Hello-o-o-o!" I shouted.
The mountains took up the cry and sent it back to me.
"What's the matter down there?" called out some one.
"The matter?" I said, angrily. "There's no matter at all; I came down
here merely for amusement. I do this sort of thing often."
I looked up and saw the red face of Colonel Hetherill peeping over the
brink at me.
"Ah, it's young West, the Yankee spy," he said.
"I'm young West, I'll admit, but I'm no Yankee spy," I replied.
"I insist that you are a Yankee spy," he said, in an infernally calm
and convincing manner. "What proof can you give that you are not?"
"Colonel," I cried, and I'm sure that my tone was convincing, "for
heaven's sake drop that Yankee spy business and get me out of this."
"Sir," he said, very stiffly, "I have accused you of being a Yankee
spy, and I will compel you to admit that you are a Yankee spy."
"Colonel," I shouted, "my arms are growing tired, and so are my toes,
and it is at least two hundred feet to the bottom."
"Sir," he said, still very stiff and haughty, "I despise falsehoods,
and so do all Southern gentlemen. You are a Yankee spy, and you still
have the face to deny it."
"Pull me up colonel," I cried. "I'm getting awful tired."
"Are you not a Yankee spy?" he asked.
I thought I felt some of the muscles in my arms cracking. The time to
despise trifles had arrived.
"Yes, colonel," I said, "I'll admit that I'm a Yankee spy or anything
else you want to charge against me."
"Good enough," he said. "Now when I let my coat down, grip it with your
right hand, and hold on as if you had grown to it."
He pulled off his Confederate overcoat, curved his left arm around
a jutting rock, and with his right hand lowered the coat to me. I
embedded my right hand in the gray garment, and, grasping with the
other at the short shrubs, tried to scramble up. I did get about
half-way, but as I could find no more crevices for my toes, I hung
there, limp and exhausted.
"I can't do it, colonel," I gasped.
"You must," he said.
He tried to draw me up, but I was too heavy a weight for a single arm.
He was half over the gulf himself, but his left arm was wound like a
cable around the rock. His face was red as a beet and his breath was
short, but he showed no inclination to let go.
"You can't do it, colonel," I gasped. "Save yourself! No need for both
of us to drop."
"What sort of a man do you take me to be?" he asked, indignantly.
He breathed hard and made a great effort to pull me up. A flake of
blood appeared on his temple. I was raised up about a foot and got a
new grip on some of the shrubs, but there I stopped. I could not lift
myself up any farther, nor could the colonel lift me.
I could hear men plunging through the snow in their haste; so my shouts
had been heard by more than the colonel. I put my voice to its best
uses again. The colonel said nothing, but how he hung on to that old
army overcoat! The men had begun to shout, and I never ceased, wanting
them to make sure of the direction. Weather-seamed faces looked over
the brink. Two or three pairs of hands grasped the overcoat and pulled
me up. Somebody else seized the colonel, and I have but a hazy idea of
the next five minutes. A man who has been hanging at the verge of death
gets tired in both brain and muscle, and I needed rest.
When things came around all right again, I was sitting up on the snow
and drinking out of a brown bottle. The colonel was lying on that
blessed overcoat, his head in his daughter's lap and his face quite
pale. They were binding a white cloth around his temples.
"What's the matter?" I asked, weakly.
"An old wound on his head has broken," replied one of the men, in a low
voice. "I'm afraid he's in a pretty bad way."
I put down the brown bottle which had comforted me, and I saw that the
colonel in fact was in a bad way. He was unconscious, and his breathing
was weak. He seemed to have collapsed after a season of fever and
excitement followed by the great physical strain put upon him by the
attempted rescue of me.
I was struck with remorse. My arrival at Fort Defiance had caused all
this trouble. Yet my going there was an accident, not a matter that I
could have helped.
I sent one of the men after Dr. Ambrose, pointing out the direction
in which he had gone, and urging the man to make all haste. Then we
lifted the colonel and carried him to the hut, where with overcoats and
blankets we fixed up a warm bed for him and did what else we could
until the doctor came, which was not till late.
"He has about an even chance, Miss Hetherill," said the doctor, after
he had made his examination. "The odds might be his if I had here all
that I need, but this is no hospital. I think it is best to tell you
the exact truth."
I thought so too. There are women and women; some are brave and some
are not; I like the brave ones best. She became chief nurse at once.
Lucky it is for a man, ill in such a place, to have a woman's care. I,
still feeling remorse, although my reason told me I was not at fault,
helped all I could.
The snow ceased, and toward evening the colonel grew stronger. Dr.
Ambrose had managed to close up the reopened wound and stop the
bleeding, but a burning fever came over him and he began to talk very
wildly. Then I saw how the things on which a man's mind is centred
when he wakes come out again in sleep or delirium. His talk was all of
the war and the old battles, which he was fighting as if he rode and
charged in them again.
I, who loved the Union, could not help feeling a deep sympathy for him,
he seemed to have taken the matter so much to heart. When he rambled
on to the end of the war,--that is, the end according to history,--and
repeated again and again his declaration to stand out forever, I was
touched, and touched very deeply. Some one brought him the news that
Lee was dead.
"I will not believe it," he cried, in his delirium. "It's a lie. He is
living, and he will lead us again."
He rose suddenly, and, fixing his fever-filled eyes upon me, demanded
of me to bear witness that it was a lie.
"Yes, colonel," I said, as soothingly as I could, "it's a lie: the
general is living, and he is your commander still."
I think I will get forgiveness for my own lie.
After a while he sank into something which resembled sleep more and
delirium less, and was quiet. Miss Hetherill stepped to the little door
for air. Only she and I were there.
"Miss Hetherill," I said, reproaching myself, "how you must blame me
for bringing all this grief upon you and yours!"
"You could not help it," she said, very gently, "and perhaps, as I told
you before, it may be for the best, after all. A rough cure may be the
best cure."
Dr. Ambrose came up then and insisted that we should take rest while
others watched. We fenced off a corner of the camp for Grace. I sought
my own place, and was soon sound asleep. In the morning I found the
colonel in delirium again, though not so violent as he had been in the
early part of the night. He was talking about me. I seemed to weigh
upon his conscience, as he had weighed upon mine. He had never meant to
do it, he said. He would not have executed me, though he still seemed
to think that his military duty commanded it. At any rate, he was
apologizing to me in his sleep, when a man's talk speaks his thoughts
and no falsehoods or evasions.
"How could I execute him?" he said. "And we slept under the same
blanket, too."
The second attack of delirium did not last long, and Dr. Ambrose then
said that the patient's progress was good: if we could only get him
back to Fort Defiance he would guarantee his recovery.
The snow had ceased and the clouds had gone, leaving a cheerful sun
shining on a white wilderness. We decided to undertake the journey to
Fort Defiance, and our preparations were brief. We had sufficient skill
and material to make a rude litter for the colonel, and we lifted him
gently into it. Then we gathered up our baggage and set out, four men
carrying the litter and relieved at brief intervals by the other sets.
We had to trample a way through the deep snow, and there was plenty of
hard work for us, but we became a cheerful little army. The colonel
was asleep in his litter and seemed to be growing steadily better;
the doctor reported that his pulse was stronger and his fever was
departing. Grace passed from sadness into cheerfulness, almost gayety.
I called her our vivandiere: she replied she was proud of the place.
"You heard what my father said about you in his delirium?" she said,
when we became the last two of the procession. "He would not have
executed you."
"Colonel Hetherill is a fine man, and he has my gratitude," I replied,
not liking to see her under the necessity of excusing him. "He saved
my life a second time. If it hadn't been for him, I'd now be a very
cold corpse at the bottom of a two-hundred-foot precipice, under about
fifteen feet of snow."
"That would have been a chilly tomb," she said, gayly; "but it was not
for you, and we are all thankful."
The weather, it seemed, wished to make some amends for its previous
wickedness. The sun was bright and the air fresh and full of tonic.
Only the snow stood in our way. But we made good progress in spite of
it. At night we devised another rude camp, and took plenty of sleep.
The colonel continued to improve, and his head became quite clear
again. He talked a little, but in a weak tone, and the doctor ordered
him to be silent for his own good. He obeyed like a little child. In
fact, his change in manner and appearance was very striking. He was no
longer the haughty, high-tempered colonel. He was crushed and forlorn.
All the spirit seemed to have gone out of him. It was most pitiful. I
felt sorrier than ever for him, for I knew he looked upon himself as a
defeated man.
We caught the first glimpse of Fort Defiance that afternoon. I saw the
comb of its roof shining like a great white sword-blade in the sun. The
valley, like the mountains, was in garments of white, but the sight of
the houses and fields, under snow though they were, warmed the heart
after the weary tramp among the clefts and peaks.
We descended the slopes and entered the valley. It was my turn to be
one of the four at the colonel's litter. As we swung along at a good
pace, I noticed suddenly that the old man had put his hands to his face
and a tear was dropping between two fingers.
I was silent for a while from respect, but, as he did not take his
hands away, I asked at last, though as quietly as I could,--
"What is the matter, colonel? Do you feel worse?"
He took his hands away, and his face was like that of a dead man.
"Not worse in body, Mr. West," he replied, "but worse, much worse, in
mind. I have failed in everything, and through the treachery of my own
people. You have corrupted them all. Even my own daughter has turned
against me. I am going to Fort Defiance, which was our last stronghold,
a prisoner."
"Colonel," said I, "what are you thinking about? What are you dreaming
of? You a prisoner! Fort Defiance betrayed! Look yonder!"
We were near the fort now, and I pointed to the Confederate flag, that
waved over it, folding and unfolding in the clear frosty breeze. The
colonel looked, and his face changed in a moment from death to life.
The blood flowed into his cheeks; his eyes sparkled like a soldier's
eager for battle.
"Why, what does that mean?" he exclaimed.
"Mean?" I said. "It means that you've been dreaming, or you wouldn't
talk about being betrayed, a prisoner. What made you rush off in such
haste? Dr. Ambrose's suggestion of surrender was a sudden thought, of
which he has repented. Fort Defiance is as loyal to you as ever. You
are its absolute commander. I am the prisoner, not you."
Dr. Ambrose had been walking by the litter. The colonel beckoned to him.
"Is this so, Dr. Ambrose?" he asked. "Is what Mr. West tells me true?
Am I still master of my own?"
"Certainly: how could it be otherwise," replied the doctor, with great
emphasis. "What are your orders, colonel?"
"Tell one of the men," he said, in a voice very firm despite his
physical weakness, "to go on ahead to the fort, and direct those who
are there to salute us as we approach. Mr. West, you are my prisoner,
but there are certain circumstances in your favor which I will
consider. You shall have the liberty of the fort and valley, if you
pledge your word not to attempt to escape for the present."
"With pleasure, colonel," I said; "and I thank you for your kindness."
"Grace," he said to his daughter, "remember that while Mr. West is our
prisoner he is to be treated as our guest. See to it, for I am afraid
this unfortunate illness will interfere somewhat with my duties as
host."
"I will do my best," she said.
We proceeded at a deliberate pace across the plain. As we came close
to the fort, the little brass cannon boomed again and again. The
drawbridge was down, and the men whom we left at the fort were drawn up
at parade in their best uniforms on either side of the bridge-head.
They saluted as the colonel rode proudly and triumphantly between their
lines in his litter.
He looked up at the flag which he loved so well, took off his hat, his
face flushing with pride, and thus we carried him into the fort.