KISMET. AN ACT OF GOD
Afterwards, some who compared the slope where the Oriental Limited had
stood, with the terrible pitches along the lower switchback, said: "It was
Fate;" and the defense in the damage suits against the Great Northern,
which were decided in favor of the company, called that catastrophe at
Cascade tunnel "An Act of God." In either solution, the fact that counted
was that no avalanche had occurred at this point before; mountain men had
regarded it as absolutely safe. At noon that day, a rumor reached the
stalled train that a slide at the front had struck one of the rotaries.
Laborers, at their own peril, had excavated the crew, but the plow was out
of commission, and the track was buried sixty feet under fresh tons of
snow and rock and fallen timber. The Limited could not move within
forty-eight hours, perhaps three days.
Tisdale picked up his bag and went out to the observation platform. He
knew that to attempt to follow the railroad through those swaths the
avalanches had left, under the burned skeletons of trees ready to topple
at the first pressure of other bodies of snow, was to take one's life
needlessly in his hands; but there was another way. The slope from the
track at the portal dipped through a park of hemlock and fir, and the
blaze that had swept the lower mountainside had not reached this timber;
the great boughs, like fishers' nets, supported their dripping
accumulations. Also, at this altitude, there was no undergrowth. To make
the drop directly into the canyon and follow the river down to Scenic Hot
Springs meant little more to him than a bracing tramp of a few hours.
Snowshoes were a necessity, and the demand at the little station had long
exceeded the supply, but the operator was able to furnish the length of
bale rope Tisdale asked of him. From the office door, where he had
curiously followed to see the line put to use, he watched the traveler
secure two pliable branches of hemlock, of the same size, which he brought
to the station platform, and, having stripped them of needles, bent into
ovals. Then, laying aside one, he commenced to weave half of the rope
net-wise, filling the space in the frame he held. A sudden intelligence
leaped in the agent's face. "That's simple enough," he exclaimed. "And
they'll carry you as far as you want to go."
Tisdale smiled, nodding, and picked up the remaining frame.
"Strange I never saw any one try the scheme before," the operator
commented. "I've weathered a good many blockades up here; seen lots of
fellows, men whose time was money, bucking it out to open track. But I bet
the first time this idea struck you you were up against it. I bet it's a
yarn worth listening to."
Tisdale glanced up; the genial lines deepened. "It was a situation to
clear a man's head. There was snow from three to seven feet deep ahead of
me and going soft. My snowshoes, lost with the outfit at a hole in a Yukon
crossing, were swinging down-stream under the ice. I had two sea biscuit
in my pocket and a few inches of dried venison, with the nearest
road-house over fifty miles away."
"Well, that was hard luck," the agent shook his head gravely.
"It was the best kind of luck," responded Tisdale quickly, "to find myself
with that rope in my hands and a nice little spruce on the bank to supply
frames enough for a regiment. I was rigging a kind of derrick to ease my
sled up the sharp pitch from the crossing."
"I see," said the operator thoughtfully, "and the sled broke through. Lost
it and the outfit. But your dogs--saved them, didn't you?"
"All but two." Tisdale's brows contracted. "They were dragged under the
ice before I could cut the traces. There was leather enough on the leaders
to bind those shoes on, but"--and the humorous lines deepened again--"a
couple of straps, from an old suitcase, if you happen to have one, would
be an improvement."
The operator hurried into the office and, after a vigorous search among
the miscellaneous articles stored under his desk, found an old valise,
from which he detached the desired straps. Tisdale adjusted the improvised
shoes. "I will send them back by a brakeman from Scenic Springs," he said,
rising from his seat on the edge of the platform. "You can keep them for a
pattern."
"All right," the operator laughed. "If you do, I'll have to lay in a stock
of bale rope."
It was beginning to snow again, big, soft flakes, and the wind, skimming
the drifts, speedily filled the broad, light rings Tisdale left in his
wake. A passenger with a baby in his arms stood on the observation
platform, and the child held out its mittened hands to him, crowing, with
little springs. They had formed an acquaintance during the delay in the
Rockies, which had grown to intimacy in the Cascades, and Hollis slipped
the carrying strap of his bag over his shoulder and stopped to toss him a
snowball, before he turned from the track. "Good-by, Joey," he said. "I am
coming back for you if there's a chance."
The operator, shivering, closed the door. "Never saw such a man," he
commented. "But if he's lived in Alaska, a Cascade blizzard would just be
a light breeze to him." He paused to put a huge stick of wood in the
stove, then, after the habit of solitary humanity, resumed his soliloquy.
"I bet he's seen life. I bet, whoever he is, he's somewheres near the top
of the ladder. I bet, in a bunch of men, he does the thinking. And I bet
what he wants, I don't care what's piled in his way, he gets."
As he descended, the trees closed behind Tisdale, rank on rank, and were
enveloped in the swaying curtain of the snow. Always a certain number
surrounded him; they seemed to march with him like a bodyguard. But he was
oblivious of the peril that from the higher peak had appeared so imminent
to Lucky Banks. When the snow-cloud lifted, the Pass was still completely
veiled from him, and the peak the prospector's party had ascended was then
cut off by the intervening ridge. He had crossed the headwaters and was
working along this slope down the watercourse, when the noise of the first
avalanche startled the gorge. A little later a far shout came to his quick
ear. He answered, but when another call reached him from a different
point, high up beyond the ridge, he was silent. He knew a company,
separated in the neighborhood of the slide, was trying to get into
communication. Then, in the interval that he waited, listening, began the
ominous roar of the mightier cataclysm. The mountain he had descended
seemed to heave; its front gave way; the ridge on which he stood trembled
at the concussion.
Instantly, before the clamor ceased and the first cries reached him,
Tisdale knew what had occurred. His sense of location told him. Then the
fact was pressed on him that some on the unfortunate train still survived.
He saw that the course he had taken from the west portal was no longer
possible, but by keeping the curve of the ridge which joined the mountain
slope and formed the top of the gorge, and by working upward, he should be
able to gain the upper edge of the slide where rose the human sounds. He
took this way. His shoulder, turned a little, met the lower boughs with
the dip and push of the practiced woodsman, and even on the up-grade the
distance fell behind him swiftly. Always subconsciously, as he moved, he
saw that baby crowing him a good-by, and the young father smiling Godspeed
from the observation platform; sometimes the girl mother with tender brown
eyes watched him from the background. Suppose their coach, which had
directly preceded the observation car, had escaped; the snow-cloud,
parting on the mountain top, showed that the roofs of the station still
remained.
After a while he noticed two men working downward from the portal along
the swath of the avalanche. One, he conjectured, was the operator, but
they stopped some distance above him and commenced to remove sections of
the débris. Then Hollis saw before him some brilliant spots on the snow.
They proved to be only pieces of stained glass from a shattered transom.
The side of the car with denuded window casings rested a few feet higher,
and a corner of the top of the coach protruded from under the fallen
skeleton of a fir. The voices now seemed all around him. Somewhere a man
was shouting "Help!" Another groaned, cursing, and, deeper in the
wreckage, rose a woman's muffled, continuous screaming. But, nearer than
the rest, a child was crying piteously. He reached the intact portion of
the crushed roof and found the baby sitting unhurt on a clear breadth of
snow. The body of the father was pinned hopelessly beneath the tree, and
the mother lay under the fragment of roof, an iron bar on her tender eyes.
It was as though Destiny, having destroyed them, whimsically threw a
charmed circle around this remaining atom of the family.
"Well, Joey," Tisdale said quietly, "I've come back for you."
Instantly the child stopped crying and turned to listen; then, seeing
Tisdale, he began to crow, rocking his little body and catching up
handsful of snow to demonstrate his delight. The hands and round bud of a
mouth were blue.
"Cold, isn't it, Joey?" And he took the baby in his arms. "We can't find
your coat and mittens, but here is a nice blanket."
He stooped, as he spoke, and pulled the blanket from under a broken door,
and the child nestled its face in his neck, telling him in expressive,
complaining sounds the story of his terror and discomfort.
A man burrowed out of the snow above the log. His leg was injured, but he
began to creep, dragging it, in the direction of the woman's voice. "I'm
coming, Mary," he cried. "For God's sake, stop."
Tisdale picked up a strip from the broken door and hurried to his aid. He
put the child down and used the board as a shovel, and Joey, watching from
the peephole in his blanket, laughed and crowed again. Up the slope the
operator and his companion had extricated a brakeman, who, forgetting his
own injuries, joined the little force of rescuers.
At last the cries ceased. Haste was no longer imperative. The remaining
coaches were buried under tons of snow and debris. Weeks of labor, with
relays of men, might not reach them all. And it was time to let the
outside world know. The telephone lines were down, the telegraph out of
commission, and Tisdale, with the baby to bear him company, started to
carry the news to Scenic Hot Springs.
It had grown very cold when he rounded the top of the gorge. The arrested
thaw hung in myriads of small icicles on every bough; they changed to
rubies when the late sun blazed out briefly; the trees seemed strung with
gems; the winds that gathered on the high dome above the upper canyon
rushed across the summit of the ridge. They fluted every pipe, and, as
though it were an enchanted forest, all the small pendants on all the
branches changed to striking cymbals and silver bells. The baby slept as
warm and safe in his blanket as though he had not left his mother's arms.
Once there came a momentary lull, and on the silence, far off--so far it
seemed hardly more than a human breath drifting with the lighter current
that still set towards him from the loftier peak--Tisdale heard some one
calling him. His pulses missed their beat and raced on at fever heat. He
believed, in that halting instant, it was Beatriz Weatherbee. Then the
gale, making up for the pause, swept down in fury, and he hurried under
the shelter of the ridge with the child. He told himself there had been no
voice; it was an illusion. That the catastrophe, following so closely on
his illness, had unhinged him a little. The Morganstein party had
doubtless returned to Seattle at the beginning of the thaw; and even had
Mrs. Weatherbee remained at Scenic Springs, it was not probable she had
strayed far from the comfort and safety of the hotel. And recalling that
night she had passed in the Wenatchee mountains, he smiled.
As twilight fell, a ruddy illumination outlined the ridge. He conjectured
that the men he had heard early in the afternoon in the vicinity of the
first slide were a party of belated hunters, who had camped in the upper
canyon. They must have known of the greater avalanche; possibly of the
disaster. They may have sent a messenger to the Springs and kindled this
beacon to guide any one who might choose this way to bring the news from
the portal. At least they would be able to direct him to the shortest out;
serve him the cup of coffee of which he was in need. So, coming to the end
of the ridge where the canyons met, he turned in the direction of the
fire, and found--two waiting women.
Their presence alone was an explanation. Mrs. Feversham had only to say
Lucky Banks had led their party, in the ascent of the peak that brilliant
morning, and instantly everything was clear to Tisdale. The voice he had
heard from the top of the ridge was not an illusion. She had called him.
"It was snowing," he said, interrupting the story, "but if they left the
shadow of a trail, Banks found it. There are two of them, though, and up
there--it's cold." Then, having gone a few steps, he remembered the child
and came back to put him in Elizabeth's arms. "His father and mother are
dead," he explained briefly, "but he hasn't a bruise. When he wakes, he is
going to be hungry."
So, forgetting those wearing hours of rescue work, and without the coffee
for which he had intended to ask, he started on the prospector's trail. In
a little while, as he skirted the foot of the slide, he heard a great
commotion on the slope beyond. It was Lucky Banks easing his human
toboggan down the last pitch to the canyon floor.
The two men stood a silent moment scanning each other in the uncertain
light across that load. Tisdale's eyes were searching for an answer to the
question he could not ask, but the prospector, breathing hard, was trying
to cover the emotion Tisdale's unexpected appearance had roused.
"Hello, Hollis," he said at last. "Is that you? I had to see after Dave's
wife, but I thought likely, when I got her to camp, I'd take a little hike
up to the tunnel and look you up."
But Tisdale, not finding the answer for which he looked, sank to his knee
beside the load and loosened the straps. Then he lifted a corner of the
rug that protected her face, and at the sight of it, so white, so still,
his heart cried. "Little soldier!" he said over and over and, as though he
hoped to warm them, laid his cheek gently to her blue lips. "You called
me! I heard you. I failed you, too!"
Then a fluttering breath steadied him. Instantly the iron in the man
cropped through. He felt her pulse, her heart, as though she had been some
stranger from the unfortunate train and, moving her to a level place,
fixed her head low and began firmly, with exceeding care, those expedients
to eliminate the frost and start the circulation that Banks had already
hurriedly tried. His great, warm personality enfolded her; he worked
tirelessly, as though he was determined to infuse her numb veins with his
own vigor. When the prospector would have aided him, he wished to do
everything alone, and directed the miner's attention to Frederic
Morganstein, who showed signs of returning consciousness.
But the intrepid little man failed to respond. "I guess likely he will
pull through," he said dryly. "He had a pretty good shaking up coming
down, and I'd better run around to camp and get a bottle of port I cached
this morning. The snipe got away with my flask; used the last drop,
likely, before she needed it." His voice took a higher pitch, and he added
over his shoulder, as he started in the direction of the fire: "He made a
windbreak of her."
When he returned presently with the wine, Frederic was filling the night
with his complaints and groans. But neither of the men gave him any
attention. That was left for Marcia, who had followed the prospector.
Beatriz Weatherbee was still unconscious. She was carried to the camp and
laid in a sheltered place remote from the fire. Then Lucky Banks
volunteered to go to Scenic Springs with the news of the train disaster,
and to bring an extra man with lanterns and a stretcher. He was well on
the way when Morganstein crept in. Marcia found him a seat on the end of a
log and, wrapping the cached rug about him, regaled him with the recovered
portion of the luncheon. But it was long after that when Beatriz
Weatherbee's eyelids fluttered open. Tisdale drew a little more into the
shadows, waiting, and the first to come within her range of vision was the
child. He was sitting on his blanket in the strong glow, and just beyond
him Elizabeth, who had found a tin of cream in the cache and had been
feeding him, was putting away the cup. Joey faced the waking woman and,
catching her look, he put out his hands, rocking gayly, and crowed.
Instantly a flash of intelligence lighted her face. She smiled and tried
to stretch out her arms. "Come!" she said.
Elizabeth caught up the child and placed him beside her on the rug. He put
out his soft, moist fingers, touching her face curiously, with gathering
doubt. Then, satisfied this was not his mother, as in the uncertain light
he must have supposed, he drew back with a whimper and clung to Elizabeth.
At the same moment Mrs. Weatherbee's smile changed to disappointment. "His
eyes are brown, Elizabeth," she said, "and my baby's were blue, like
mine." And she turned her face, weeping; not hysterically, like a woman
physically unstrung, but with the slow, deep sobs of a woman who has
wakened from a dream of one whom she has greatly loved--and buried.