IN THE BLIZZARD
"Swiftwater" Pete, the driver of the stage between Kusiak and Katma,
did not like the look of the sky as his ponies breasted the long uphill
climb that ended at the pass. It was his habit to grumble. He had been
complaining ever since they had started. But as he studied the heavy
billows of cloud banked above the peaks and in the saddle between, there
was real anxiety in his red, apoplectic face.
"Gittin' her back up for a blizzard, looks like. Doggone it, if that
wouldn't jest be my luck," he murmured fretfully.
Sheba hoped there would be one, not, of course, a really, truly blizzard
such as Macdonald had told her about, but the tail of a make-believe
one, enough to send her glowing with exhilaration into the roadhouse
with the happy sense of an adventure achieved. The girl had got out to
relieve the horses, and as her young, lissom body took the hill
scattering flakes of snow were already flying.
To-day she was buoyed up by a sense of freedom. For a time, at least,
she was escaping Macdonald's driving energy, the appeal of Gordon
Elliot's warm friendliness, and the unvoiced urging of Diane. Good old
Peter and the kiddies were the only ones that let her alone.
She looked back at the horses laboring up the hill. Swiftwater had got
down and was urging them forward, his long whip crackling about the ears
of the leaders. He waddled as he walked. His fat legs were too short for
the round barrel body. A big roll of fat bulged out over the collar of
his shirt. Whenever he was excited--and he always was on the least
excuse--he puffed and snorted and grew alarmingly purple.
"Fat chance," he exploded as soon as he got within hearing. "Snow in
those clouds--tons of it. H'm! And wind. Wow! We're in for an
honest-to-God blizzard, sure as you're a foot high."
Swiftwater was worried. He would have liked to turn and run for it. But
the last roadhouse was twenty-seven miles back. If the blizzard came
howling down the slope they would have a sweet time of it reaching
safety. Smith's Crossing was on the other side of the divide, only nine
miles away. They would have to worry through somehow. Probably those
angry clouds were half a bluff.
The temperature was dropping rapidly. Already snow fell fast in big
thick flakes. To make it worse, the wind was beginning to rise. It came
in shrill gusts momentarily increasing in force.
The stage-driver knew the signs of old and cursed the luck that had led
him to bring the stage. It was to have been the last trip with horses
until spring. His dogs were waiting for him at Katma for the return
journey. He did not blame himself, for there was no reason to expect
such a storm so early in the season. None the less, it was too bad that
his lead dog had been ailing when he left the gold camp eight days
before.
Miss O'Neill knew that Swiftwater Pete was anxious, and though she was
not yet afraid, the girl understood the reason for it. The road ran
through the heart of a vast snow-field, the surface of which was being
swept by a screaming wind. The air was full of sifted white dust, and
the road furrow was rapidly filling. Soon it would be obliterated.
Already the horses were panting and struggling as they ploughed forward.
Sheba tramped behind the stage-driver and in her tracks walked Mrs.
Olson, the other passenger.
Through the muffled scream of the storm Swiftwater shouted back to
Sheba. "You wanta keep close to me."
She nodded her head. His order needed no explanation. The world was
narrowing to a lane whose walls she could almost touch with her fingers.
A pall of white wrapped them. Upon them beat a wind of stinging sleet.
Nothing could be seen but the blurred outlines of the stage and the
driver's figure.
The bitter cold searched through Sheba's furs to her soft flesh and the
blast of powdered ice beat upon her face. The snow was getting deeper
as the road filled. Once or twice she stumbled and fell. Her strength
ebbed, and the hinges of her knees gave unexpectedly beneath her. How
long was it, she asked herself, that Macdonald had said men could live
in a blizzard?
Staggering blindly forward, Sheba bumped into the driver. He had drawn
up to give the horses a moment's rest before sending them plunging at
the snow again.
"No chance," he called into the young woman's ear. "Never make Smith's
in the world. Goin' try for miner's cabin up gulch little way."
The team stuck in the drifts, fought through, and was blocked again ten
yards beyond. A dozen times the horses gave up, answered the sting of
the whip by diving head first at the white banks, and were stopped by
fresh snow-combs.
Pete gave up the fight. He began unhitching the horses, while Sheba and
Mrs. Olson, clinging to each other's hands, stumbled forward to join
him. The words he shouted across the back of a horse were almost lost in
the roar of the shrieking wind.
"... heluvatime ... ride ... gulch," Sheba made out.
He flung Mrs. Olson astride one of the wheelers and helped Sheba to the
back of the right leader. Swiftwater clambered upon its mate himself.
The girl paid no attention to where they were going. The urge of life
was so faint within her that she did not greatly care whether she lived
or died. Her face was blue from the cold; her vitality was sapped. She
seemed to herself to have turned to ice below the hips. Outside the
misery of the moment her whole attention was concentrated on sticking
to the back of the horse. Numb though her fingers were, she must keep
them fastened tightly in the frozen mane of the animal. She recited her
lesson to herself like a child. She must stick on--she must--she must.
Whether she lost consciousness or not Sheba never knew. The next she
realized was that Swiftwater Pete was pulling her from the horse. He
dragged her into a cabin where Mrs. Olson lay crouched on the floor.
"Got to stable the horses," he explained, and left them.
After a time he came back and lit a fire in the sheet-iron stove. As the
circulation that meant life flooded back into her chilled veins Sheba
endured a half-hour of excruciating pain. She had to clench her teeth to
keep back the groans that came from her throat, to walk the floor and
nurse her tortured hands with fingers in like plight.
The cabin was empty of furniture except for a home-made table, rough
stools, and the frame of a bed. The last occupant had left a little
firewood beside the stove, enough to last perhaps for twenty-four hours.
Sheba did not need to be told that if the blizzard lasted long enough,
they would starve to death. In the handbag left in the stage were a box
of candy and an Irish plum pudding. She had brought the latter from the
old country with her and was taking it and the chocolates to the Husted
children. But just now the stage was as far from them as Drogheda.
Like many rough frontiersmen, Swiftwater Pete was a diamond in the
raw. He had the kindly, gentle instincts that go to the making of a
good man. So far as could be he made a hopeless and impossible situation
comfortable. His judgment told him that they were caught in a trap from
which there was no escape, but for the sake of the women he put a
cheerful face on things.
"Lucky we found this cabin," he growled amiably. "By this time we'd 'a'
been up Salt Creek if we hadn't. Seeing as our luck has stood up so far,
I reckon we'll be all right. Mighty kind of Mr. Last Tenant to leave us
this firewood. Comes to a showdown we've got one table, four stools, and
a bed that will make first-class fuel. We ain't so worse off."
"If we only had some food," Mrs. Olson suggested.
"Food!" Pete looked at her in assumed surprise. "Huh! What about all
that live stock I got in the stable? I've heard tell, ma'am, that
broncho tenderloin is a favorite dish with them there French chiefs
that do the cooking. They kinder trim it up so's it's 'most as good as
frawgs' legs."
Sheba had never before slept on bare boards with a sealskin coat for a
sleeping-bag. But she was very tired and dropped off almost instantly.
Twice she woke during the night, disturbed by the stiffness and the
pain of her body. It seemed to her that the hard, whipsawed planks were
pushing through the soft flesh to the bones. She was cold, too, and
crept closer to the stout Swedish woman lying beside her. Presently she
fell asleep again to the sound of the blizzard howling outside. When she
wakened for the third time it was morning.
In the afternoon the blizzard died away. As far as she could see, Sheba
looked out upon a waste of snow. Her eyes turned from the desolation
without to the bare and cheerless room in which they had found shelter.
In spite of herself a little shiver ran down the spine of the girl. Had
she come into this Arctic solitude to find her tomb?
Resolutely she brushed the gloomy thought from her mind and began to
chat with Mrs. Olson. In a corner of the cabin Sheba had found a torn
and disreputable copy of "Vanity Fair." The covers and the first forty
pages were gone. A splash of what appeared to be tobacco juice defiled
the last sheet. But the fortunes of Becky and Amelia had served to make
her forget during the morning that she was hungry and likely to be much
hungrier before another day had passed.
As soon as the storm had moderated enough to let him go out with
safety, Swiftwater Pete had taken one of the horses for an attempt at
trail-breaking.
"Me, I'm after that plum pudding. I gotta get a feed of oats from the
stage for my bronchs too. The scenery here is sure fine, but it ain't
what you would call nourishing. Huh! Watch our smoke when me and old
Baldface git to bucking them drifts."
He had been gone two hours and the early dusk was already descending
over the white waste when Sheba ventured out to see what had become of
the stage-driver. But the cold was so bitter that she soon gave up the
attempt to fight her way through the drifts and turned back to the
cabin.
Sometime later Swiftwater Pete came stumbling into their temporary home.
He was fagged to exhaustion but triumphant. Upon the table he dropped
from the crook of his numbed arm two packages.
"The makings for a Christmas dinner," he said with a grin.
After he had taken off his mukluks and his frozen socks they wrapped
him in their furs while he toasted before the stove. Mrs. Olson thawed
out the pudding and the chocolates in the oven and made a kind of mush
out of some oats Pete had saved from the horse feed. They ate their
one-sided meal in high spirits. The freeze had saved their lives. If it
held clear till to-morrow they could reach Smith's Crossing on the crust
of the snow.
Swiftwater broke up the chairs for fuel and demolished the legs of the
table, after which he lay down before the stove and fell at once into a
sodden sleep.
Presently Mrs. Olson lay down on the bed and began to snore regularly.
Sheba could not sleep. The boards tired her bones and she was cold.
Sometimes she slipped into cat naps that were full of bad dreams. She
thought she was walking on the snow-comb of a precipice and that Colby
Macdonald pushed her from her precarious footing and laughed at her as
she slid swiftly toward the gulf below. When she wakened with a start it
was to find that the fire had died down. She was shivering from lack of
cover. Quietly the girl replenished the fire and lay down again.
When she wakened with a start it was morning. A faint light sifted
through the single window of the shack. Sheba whispered to the older
woman that she was going out for a little walk.
"Be careful, dearie," advised Mrs. Olson. "I wouldn't try to go too
far."
Sheba smiled to herself at the warning. It was not likely that she would
go far enough to get lost with all these millions of tons of snow piled
up around her in every direction.
She had come out because she was restless and was tired of the dingy
and uncomfortable room. Without any definite intentions, she naturally
followed the trail that Swiftwater had broken the day before. No wind
stirred and the sky was clear. But it was very cold. The sun would not
be up for half an hour.
As she worked her way down the gulch Sheba wondered whether the news of
their loss had reached Kusiak. Were search parties out already to rescue
them? Colby Macdonald had gone out into the blizzard years ago to save
her father. Perhaps he might have been out all night trying to save her
father's daughter. Peter would go, of course,--and Gordon Elliot. The
work in the mines would stop and men would volunteer by scores. That was
one fine thing about the North. It responded to the unwritten law that a
man must risk his own life to save others.
But if the wires had come down in the storm Kusiak would not know
they had not got through to Smith's Crossing. Swiftwater Pete spoke
cheerfully about mushing to the roadhouse. But Sheba knew the snow
would not bear the horses. They would have to walk, and it was not at
all certain that Mrs. Olson could do so long a walk with the thermometer
at forty or fifty below zero.
From a little knoll Sheba looked down upon the top of the stage three
hundred yards below her, and while she stood there the promise of the
new day was blazoned on the sky. It came with amazing beauty of green
and primrose and amethyst, while the stars flickered out and the heavens
took on the blue of sunrise. In a crotch between two peaks a faint
golden glow heralded the sun. A circle of lovely rose-pink flushed the
horizon.
Sheba had this much of the poet in her, that every sunrise was still a
miracle. She drew a deep, slow breath of adoration and turned away. As
she did so her eyes dilated and her body grew rigid.
Across the snow waste a man was coming. He was moving toward the cabin
and must cross the trench close to her. The heart of the girl stopped,
then beat wildly to make up the lost stroke. He had come through the
blizzard to save her.
At that very instant, as if the stage had been set for it, the wonderful
Alaska sun pushed up into the crotch of the peaks and poured its radiance
over the Arctic waste. The pink glow swept in a tide of delicate color
over the snow and transmuted it to millions of sparkling diamonds. The
Great Magician's wand had recreated the world instantaneously.