THE SOUTH ARÊTE
They had planned a quick relief with a small party, for every hour of
exposure lessened the missing man's chances. Glover chose for his
companions two men: Dancing--far and away the best climber in the
telegraph corps, and Smith Young, roadmaster, a chainman of Glover's
when he ran the Pilot line. Dancing and Glover were large men of
unusual strength, and Young, lighter and smaller, had been known in a
pinch to handle an ordinary steel rail. But above everything
each--even Glover, the youngest--was a man of resource and experience
in mountain craft.
They left the track near the twin bridges with only ropes and picks and
skis, and carrying stimulants and food. Without any attempt to catch
his trail from where they knew Blood must have started they made their
way as directly as possible down the side of the mountain and in the
direction of the gap. The stupendous difficulties of making headway
across the eastern slope did not become apparent until the rescuing
party was out of sight of those they had left, but from where they
floundered in ragged washouts or spread in line over glassy escarpments
they could see far up the mountain the rotary throwing a white cloud
into the sunshine and hear the far-off clamor of the engines on the
hill.
Below the snow-field which they crossed they found the superintendent's
trail, and saw that his effort had been to cross the gap at that point
and make his way out toward the western grade, where an easy climb
would have brought him to the track; or where by walking some distance
he could reach the track without climbing a foot, the grade there being
nearly four per cent.
They saw, too, why he had been forced to give up that hope, for what
would have been difficult for three fresh men with shoes was an
impossibility for a spent man in the snow alone. They knew that what
they had covered in two hours had probably cost him ten, for before
they had followed him a dozen feet they saw that he was dragging a leg;
farther, the snow showed stains and they crossed a field where he had
sat down and bandaged his leg after it had bled for a hundred yards.
The trail began, as they went on, to lose its character. Whether from
weakness or uncertainty Blood's steps had become wandering, and they
noticed that he paid less attention to directness, but shunned every
obstacle that called for climbing, struggling great distances around
rough places to avoid them. They knew it meant that he was husbanding
failing strength and was striving to avoid reopening his wound.
Twice they marked places in which he had sat to adjust his bandages,
and the strain of what they read in the snow quickened their anxiety.
Since that day Smith Young, superintendent now of the mountain
division, has never hunted, because he could never afterward follow the
trail of a wounded animal.
They found places where he had hunted for fuel, and firing signals
regularly they reached the spot where he had camped the night before,
and saw the ashes of his fire. He was headed south; not because there
was more hope that way--there was less--but as if he must keep moving,
and that were easiest. A quarter of a mile below where he had spent
the night they caught sight of a man sitting on a fallen tree resting
his leg. The next moment three men were in a tumbling race across the
slope, and Blood, weakly hurrahing, fainted in Glover's arms.
His story was short. He reminded his rescuers of the little spring on
the hill at the point where the wreck had occurred. The ice that
always spread across the track and over the edge of the gulch had been
chopped out by the shovellers the afternoon before, but water trickling
from the rock had laid a fresh trap for unwary feet during the night.
In jumping from the gangway at the moment of the wreck Blood's heels
had landed on smooth ice and he had tumbled and slid six hundred feet.
Recovering consciousness at the bottom of a washout he found the calf
of one leg ripped a little, as he put it. The loss of one side of his
mustache, swept away in the slide, and leaving on his face a peculiarly
forlorn expression, he did not take account of--declaring on the whole,
as he smiled into the swimming eyes around him, that with the exception
of tobacco he was doing very well.
They got him in front of a big fire, plied him with food and
stimulants, and Glover, from a surgical packet, bandaged anew the wound
in his leg. Then came the question of retreat.
They discussed two plans. The first to retrace their steps entirely;
the second, to go back to where the gap could be attempted and the
western track gained below the hill. Each meant long and severe
climbing, each presented its particular difficulties, and three men of
the four felt that if the torn artery opened once more their victory
would be barren--that Blood needed surgical aid promptly if at all.
But Dancing had a third plan.
It was while they still consulted at this point that their fire was
seen on Pilot Hill and reported to Bucks at the Brock car, from which
the rapidly moving party had been seen only at long intervals during
the morning.
The fire was the looked-for signal that the superintendent had been
reached, and the word went from group to group of men up the hill.
Through the strong glass that Glover had left with her, Gertrude could
see the smoke, and the storming signals of the panting engines above
her made sweeter music after she caught with her eye the faint column
in the distant gap. Even her father, feeling still something like a
conscript, brightened up at the general rejoicing. He had produced his
own glass and let Gertrude with eager prompting help him to find the
smoke. The moment the position of Glover's party was made definite,
Bucks ordered the car run down the Hog's Back to a point so much closer
that across the broad cañon, flanking Pilot on the south, they could
make out with their glasses the figures of the three men and, when they
began to move, the smaller figure of Morris Blood.
Callahan had joined his chief to watch the situation, and they
speculated as to how the four would get out of the gulf in which they
were completely hemmed. Gertrude and her father stood near.
The eyes of the two bronzed railroad men at her side were like pilot
guides to Gertrude. When she lost the wayfarers in the gullies or
along the narrow defiles that gave them passage between towering rocks,
their eyes restored the plodding line. Callahan was the first to
detect the change from the expected course. "They are working east,"
said he, after a moment's careful observation.
"East?" echoed Bucks. "You mean west."
Callahan hung to his glass. "No," he repeated, "east--and south.
Here."
Bucks took the glass and looked a long time. "I do not understand,"
said he; "they are certainly working east. What can they be after,
east? Well, they can't go very far that way without bridging the
Devil's Cañon. Callahan," he exclaimed, with sure instinct, "they will
head south. Walt now till they appear again."
He relinquished the glass to explain to Mr. Brock where next to look
for them. There was a long interval during which they did not
reappear. Then the little file emerging from the shadow of a rock
skirted a field of snow straight to the south. There were but three
men in line. One, a little ahead, breaking path; following, two large
men tramping close together, the foremost stooping under the weight of
a man lying face upward on his back, while the man behind supported the
legs under his arms.
"They are carrying Morris Blood. He is hurt--that was to be expected.
What?" exclaimed Bucks, hardly a moment afterward, "they are crossing
the snow. Callahan, by heaven, they are walking for the south side of
Pilot, that's what it means. It is a forced march; they are making for
the mines."
Mount Pilot, from the crest that divides at Devil's Gap, rises abruptly
in a three-faced peak, the pinnacle of which lies to the south.
Several hundred feet above the base lie the group of gold-mines behind
the mountain, and a short railroad spur blasted across the southern
face runs to them from Glen Tarn. Below, the mountain wall breaks in
long steps almost vertically to the base, toward which Glover's party
was heading.
The move made new dispositions necessary. Orders flew from Bucks like
curlews, for it was more essential than ever to open the hill speedily.
The private car was run across the Hog's Back, and the news sent to the
rotary crew with injunctions to push with all effort as far at least as
the mine switch, that help might be sent out on the spur to meet the
party on the climb.
The increased activity apparent far up and down the mountain as the
word went round, the bringing up of the last reserve engines for the
hill battery, the effort to get into communication by telegraph with
the mine hospital and Glen Tarn Springs, the feverish haste of the
officials in the car to make the new dispositions, all indicated to
Gertrude the approach of a crisis--the imminence of a supreme effort to
save one life if the endeavor enlisted the men and resources of the
whole division. New gangs of shovellers strung on flat-cars were being
pushed forward. Down the hill, spent and disabled engines were
returning from the front, and while they took sidings, fresh engines,
close-coupled, steamed slowly like leviathans past them up the hill.
The moment the track was clear, the private car was backed again down
the ridge. Following the serpentine winding of the right of way, the
general manager was able to run the car far around the mountain, and it
stopped opposite the southern face, which rose across the broad cañon.
When the party in the car got their glasses fixed, the little company
beyond the gulf had begun their climb and were strung like marionettes
up the base of Pilot.
The south face of the mountain, sheer for nearly a thousand feet, is
broken by narrow ledges that make an ascent possible, and not until the
peak passes the timber does snow ordinarily find lodgment upon that
side. Swept by the winds from the Spanish Sinks, the vertical reaches
above the base usually offer no obstruction to a rapid climb, though
except perhaps by early prospectors, the arête had never been scaled.
Glover, however, in locating, had covered every stretch of the mountain
on each of its sides, and Dancing's poles and brackets, like
banderillas stung into the tough hide of a bull, circled Pilot from
face to face. These two men were leading the ascent; below them could
be distinguished the roadmaster and the injured superintendent.
Stripped to the belt and lashed in the party rope, the leader, gaunt
and sinewy, stretched like an earthworm up the face of the
arête--crossing, recrossing, climbing, retreating, his spiked feet
settling warily into fresh holes below, his sensitive hands spreading
like feelers high over the smooth granite for new holds above. Slowly,
always, and with the deliberate reserve that quieted with confidence
the feverish hearts watching across the gulf, the leaders steadily
scaled the height that separated them from the track. Like sailors
patiently warping home, the three men in advance drew and lifted the
fourth, who doughtily helped himself with foot and hand as chance
allowed and watched patiently from below while his comrades disputed
with the sheer wall for a new step above.
Bucks and Callahan, following every move, mapped the situation to their
companions as its features developed. With each triumph on the arête,
bursts of commendation and surprise came from the usually taciturn men
watching the struggle with growing wonder. Bucks, apprehensive of
delays in the track-opening on the hill, sent Callahan back in the car
with instructions to pick a gang of ten men and pack them somewhom
across the snow to the mine spur, that they might be ready to meet the
climbing party and carry the superintendent down to the mine hospital.
Thirty feet below the mine track and as far above where Glover at that
moment was sitting--his rope made fast and his legs hanging over a
ledge, while his companions reached new positions--a granite wall rises
to where the upper face has been blasted away from the roadbed. To the
east, this wall hangs without a break up or down for a hundred feet,
but to the west it roughens and splits away from the main spur, forming
a crevice or chimney from two to three feet wide, opening at the top to
ten feet, where a small bridge carries the track across it. This
chimney had been Dancing's quest from the moment the ascent began, for
he had lost a man in that chimney when stringing the mine wires, and
knew precisely what it was.
The chimney once gained, Dancing figured that the last thirty feet
should be easy work, and he had made but one miscalculation--when he
had descended it to pull up his lineman, it was summer. Without
extraordinary difficulty, Glover gained the ledge where the chimney
opened and waited for his companions to ascend. When all were up, they
rested a few moments on their dizzy perch, and, while Bill Dancing
investigated the chimney, Glover took the chance to renew once more
Morris Blood's bandages, which, strained by the climbing, caused
continual anxiety.
Bucks, with the party in his glass, could see every move. He saw
Dancing disappear into the rock while his comrades rested, and made him
out, after some delay, reappearing from the cleft. What he could not
make out was the word that Dancing brought back; the chimney was a
solid mass of ice.
Standing with the two men, Gertrude used her glass constantly.
Frequently she asked questions, but frequently she divined ahead of her
companions the directions and the movements. The hesitation that
followed Dancing's return did not escape her. Up and down the narrow
step on which they stood, the three men walked, scanning anxiously the
wall that stretched above them.
So, hounds at fault on a trail double on their steps and move uneasily
to and fro, nosing the missing scent. As lions flatten behind their
cagebars, the climbers laid themselves against the rock and pushed to
the right and the left seeking an avenue of escape. They had every
right to expect that help would already have reached them, but on the
hill, through haste and confusion of orders, the new rotary had
stripped a gear, and an hour had been lost in getting in the second
plough. For safety, the climbers had in their predicament nothing to
fear. The impelling necessity for action was the superintendent's
condition; his companions knew he could not last long without a surgeon.
When suspense had become unbearable, Dancing re-entered the chimney.
He was gone a long time. He reappeared, crawling slowly out on an
unseen footing, a mere flaw in the smooth stretch of granite half way
up to the track. By cutting his rope and throwing himself a dozen
times at death, old Bill Dancing had gained a foothold, made fast a
line, and divided the last thirty feet to be covered. One by one, his
companions disappeared from sight--not into the chimney, but to the
side of it where Dancing had blazed a few dizzy steps and now had a
rope dangling to make the ascent practicable.
One by one, Gertrude saw the climbers, reappearing above, crawl like
flies out on the face of the rock and, with craning necks and cautious
steps, seek new advantage above. They discovered at length the remains
of a scrub pine jutting out below the railroad track. The tree had
been sawed off almost at the root, when the roadbed was levelled, and a
few feet of the trunk was left hugging upward against the granite wall.
Glover, Young, and Dancing consulted a moment. The thing was not
impossible; the superintendent was bleeding to death.
Spectators across the gap saw movements they could not quite
comprehend. Safety lines were overhauled for the last time, the picks
put in the keeping of Morris Blood, who lay flat on the ledge. Glover
and Bill Dancing, facing outward, planted themselves side by side
against the rocky wall. Smith Young, facing inward, flattened himself
in Glover's arms, passed across him and, pushing his safety-girdle well
up under his arms, stood a moment between the two big men. Glover and
Dancing, getting their hands through the belt from either side, gripped
him, and Young uncoiled from his right hand a rope noosed like a
lariat. Steadied by his companions and swinging his arms in a cautious
segment on the wall, he tried to hitch the noose over the trunk of the
pine.
With the utmost skill and patience, he coaxed the loop up again and
again into the air overhead, but the brush of the short branches
against the rock defeated every attempt to get a hold.
He rested, passed the rope into his other hand, and with the same
collected persistence endeavored to throw it over from the left.
Sweat beaded Bucks' forehead as he looked. Gertrude's father, the man
of sixty millions, with nerves bedded in ice, crushed an unlighted
cigar between his teeth, and tried to steady the glass that shook in
his hand. Gertrude, resting one hand on a bowlder against which she
steadied herself, neither spoke nor moved. The roadmaster could not
land his line.
The two men released him and, with arms spread wide, he slipped over to
where Morris Blood lay, took from him the two picks, and cautiously
rejoined his comrades. Two of the men reversing their positions, faced
the rock wall. They fixed a pick into a cranny between their heads,
crouched together, and the third, planting his feet first on their
knees and then their shoulders, was raised slowly above them.
The glasses turned from afar caught a sheen of sunshine that spread for
an instant across the face of the mountain and sharply outlined the
flattened form high on the arête. The figure seemed brought by the
dazzling light startlingly near, and those looking could distinguish in
his hand a pick, which, with his right arm extended, he slowly swung up
and up the face of the rock until he should swing it high to hook
through the roots of the pine.
Gertrude asked Bucks who it was that spread himself above his comrades,
and he answered, Dancing; but it was Glover.
Deliberately his extended arm rose and fell in the arc he was
following, higher and higher, till the pick swung above his head and
lodged where he sent it among the pine-tree roots. At the very moment,
one of the men supporting him moved--the pick had dislodged a heavy
chip of granite; in falling it struck his crouching supporter on the
head. The man steadied himself instantly, but the single instant cost
the balance of the upmost figure. With a suppressed struggle,
heartbreaking half a mile away, the man above strove to right himself.
Like light his second hand reached for the pick handle; he could not
recover it. The pyramid wavered and Glover, helpless, spread his hands
wide.
By an instinct deeper than life, she knew him then, and cried out and
out in agony. But the pyramid was dissolving before his eyes, and she
saw a strange figure with outstretched arms, a figure she no longer
knew, slowly slipping headlong down a blood-red wall that burned itself
into her brain.