CHANNEL ICE
A jolly party set off for Velpen Sunday morning. Hank Bruebacher had
remained over night on purpose to escort them to the river in his ’bus.
It had been caught on the wrong side. The channel had closed over about
the middle of the week. The ice had been very thin at first; there had
been no drop of the thermometer, but a gradual lowering night after
night had at last made men deem it safe to cross on foot. A rumor to
this effect had drifted in to the tired jurors hanging around and
killing time, waiting to be called. Sunday in Kemah was impossible—to
many. Besides, they had had a week of it. They were sure of a good
dinner at Velpen, where there had been no such fearful inroads on the
supplies, and the base of whose supplies, moreover, was not cut off as
it was at Kemah by the closing of the river, which was not yet solid
enough for traffic. That consideration held weight with many. Saloon
service was a little better, and that, too, had its votaries. Business
appointments actuated Gordon and perhaps a few others. _Ennui_ pure and
simple moved the Court and the Court’s assistant.
It was about ten in the morning. It was frosty, but bright, and the
little cold snap bade fair to die prematurely. It surely was wonderful
weather for South Dakota.
“Where is Mary?” asked the Judge, as Louise came lightly down the
stairs, ready to put on her gloves.
“She went out to the Whites’ an hour or so ago—to do the week’s washing,
I suspect. Mr. Langford took her out.”
“Louise! On Sunday!” Even the tolerant Judge was shocked.
“It’s true, Uncle Hammond,” persisted Louise, earnestly.
She wore a modish hat that was immensely becoming, and looked charming.
Gordon stood at the worn, wooden steps, hat off, despite the nipping
air, waiting to assist her to the place the gallant Hank had reserved
for her.
He sat down at her right, Judge Dale at her left. The jurymen filled the
other places rapidly. The heavy wagon lurched forward. The road was
good; there had been no snows or thaws. Now was Hank in his element. It
is very probable that he was the most unreservedly contented man in
seven States that fair Sunday morning—always excepting Munson of the
Three Bars. A few straggling buckboards and horsemen brought up the
rear. Judge Dale, taking to himself as much room as it was possible to
confiscate with elbows slyly pressed outward chickenwing-wise, fished
out his newspaper leisurely, leaned over Gordon to say in a
matter-of-fact voice, “Just amuse Louise for a little while, will you,
Dick, while I glance at the news; you won’t have to play, just talk,—she
likes to talk,” and buried himself in the folds of the jiggling paper;
much jiggled because Hank had no intention of permitting any vehicle to
pass the outfit of which the Judge was passenger while he, Hank
Bruebacher, held the reins. He was an authority of the road, and as
such, he refused to be passed by anything on wheels.
The rattle of the wagon drowned all coherent conversation. The Judge’s
outspread arms had forced Louise very close to her neighbor on the
right, who had the instructions to keep her amused, but even then he
must bend his head if he were to obey orders strictly and—talk. He chose
to obey. Last night, he had been worn out with the strain of the week;
he had not been able to forget things. To-day,—well, to-day was to-day.
“Are you going to hear the bishop?” asked Louise. It was a little hard
to make conversation when every time one lifted one’s eyes one found
one’s self so startlingly close to a man’s fine face.
“Surely!” responded Gordon. “An incomparable scholar—an indefatigable
workman—truest of saints.” There was grave reverence in his lowered
voice.
“You know him well?”
“Yes. I see him often in his Indian mission work. He is one of the best
friends I have.”
The river gleamed with a frozen deadness alongside. The horses’ hoofs
pounded rhythmically over the hardened road. Opposite, a man who had
evidently found saloon service in Kemah pretty good, but who doubtless
would put himself in a position to make comparisons as soon as ever his
unsteady feet could carry him there, began to sing a rollicking melody
in a maudlin falsetto.
“Shut up!” One of the men nudged him roughly.
“Right you are,” said the singer, pleasantly, whose name was Lawson. “It
is not seemly that we lift up our voices in worldly melody on this holy
day and—in the presence of a lady,” with an elaborate bow and a vacant
grin that made Louise shrink closer to the Judge. “I suggest we all join
in a sacred song.” He followed up his own suggestion with a discordant
burst of “Yes, we will gather at the river.”
“He means the kind o’ rivers they have in the ‘Place around the
Corner,’” volunteered Hank, turning around with a knowing wink. “They
have rivers there—plenty of ’em—only none of ’em ever saw water.”
“I tell you, shut up,” whispered the man who had first chided. “Can’t
you see there’s a lady present? No more monkey-shines or we’ll oust you.
Hear?”
“I bow to the demands of the lady,” said Lawson, subsiding with happy
gallantry.
“You have many ‘best friends’ for a man who boasted not so long ago that
he stood alone in the cow country,” said Louise, resuming the
interrupted conversation with Gordon.
“He is one of the fingers,” retorted Gordon. “I confessed to one hand,
you will remember.”
“Let me see,” said Louise, musingly. She began counting on her own
daintily gloved hand.
“Mrs. Higgins is the thumb, you said?” questioningly.
“Yes.”
“Mr. Langford is the first finger, of course?”
“Of course.”
“And Uncle Hammond is the middle finger?”
“You have said it.”
“And the bishop is the third finger?”
“He surely is.”
“And—and—Mary is the next?”
“Sorceress! You have guessed all right.”
“Then where am I?” she challenged, half in earnest, half in fun. “You
might have left at least the little finger for me.”
He laughed under his breath—an unsteady sort of laugh, as if something
had knocked at his habitual self control. There was only one answer to
that gay, mocking challenge—only one—and that he could not give. He
forgot for a little while that there were other people in the wagon. The
poor babbling, grinning man across the way was not the only drunken man
therein. Only one answer, and that to draw the form closer—closer to
him—against his heart—for there was where she belonged. Fingers? What
did he care for fingers now? He wanted to lay his face down against her
soft hair—it was so perilously near. If only he might win in his fight!
But even so, what would it matter? What could there ever be for her in
this cruel, alien land? She had been so kindly and lovingly nurtured. In
her heart nestled the home call—for all time. She was bound in its
meshes. They would draw her sooner or later to her sure and inevitable
destiny. And what was there for him elsewhere—after all these years?
Kismet. He drew a long breath.
“I’m a poor maverick, I suppose, marked with no man’s friendship. But
you see I’m learning the language of the brotherhood. Why don’t you
compliment me on my adaptability?”
She looked up smilingly. She was hurt, but he should never know it. And
he, because of the pain in him, answered almost roughly:
“It is not a language for you to learn. You will never learn. Quit
trying. You are not like us.”
She, because she did not understand, felt the old homesick choking in
her throat, and remembered with a reminiscent shudder of the first awful
time she had spun along that road. Everybody seemed to spin in this
strange land. She felt herself longing for the fat, lazy, old jogging
horses of her country home. Horses couldn’t hurry there because the
hills were too many and the roads too heavy. These lean, shaggy,
range-bred horses were diabolical in their predilection for going.
Hank’s surely were no exception to the rule. He pulled them up with a
grand flourish at the edge of the steep incline leading directly upon
the pontoon that bridged the narrowed river on the Kemah side of the
island, and they stopped dead still with the cleanness worthy of cow
ponies. The suddenness of the halt precipitated them all into a general
mix-up. Gordon had braced himself for the shock, but Louise was wholly
unprepared. She was thrown violently against him. The contact paled his
face. The soft hair he had longed to caress in his madness brushed his
cheek. He shivered.
“Oh!” cried Louise, laughing and blushing, “I wasn’t expecting that!”
Most of the men were already out and down on the bridge. A lone
pedestrian was making his way across.
“All safe?” queried Judge Dale, as he came up.
“A little thin over the channel, but all safe if you cross a-foot.”
“Suppose we walk across the island,” suggested the Judge, who
occasionally overcame his indolence in spasmodic efforts to counteract
his growing portliness, “and our friend Hank will meet us here in the
morning.”
So it was agreed. The little party straggled gayly across the bridge.
The walk across the island was far from irksome. The air was still
bracing, though rags of smoky cloud were beginning to obscure the sun.
The gaunt cottonwoods stood out in sombre silhouette against the
unsoftened bareness of the winter landscape. Louise was somewhat
thoughtful and pensive since her little attempt to challenge intimacy
had been so ungraciously received. To Gordon, on the other hand, had
come a strange, new exhilaration. His blood bounded joyously through his
veins. This was his day—he would live it to the dregs. To-morrow, and
renunciation—well, that was to-morrow. He could not even resent, as,
being a man, he should have resented, the unwelcome and ludicrous
attentions of the drunken singer to the one woman in the crowd, because
whenever the offender came near, Louise would press closer to him,
Gordon, and once, in her quick distaste to the proximity of the man, she
clutched Gordon’s coat-sleeve nervously. It was the second time he had
felt her hand on his arm. He never forgot either. But the man received
such a withering chastisement from Gordon’s warning eyes that he ceased
to molest until the remainder of the island road had been traversed.
Then men looked at each other questioningly. A long, narrow,
single-plank bridge stretched across the channel. It was not then so
safe as report would have it. The boards were stretched lengthwise with
a long step between each board and the next. What was to be done? Hank
had gone long since. No one coveted the long walk back to Kemah. Every
one did covet the comfort or pleasure upon which each had set his heart.
Gordon, the madness of his intoxication still upon him, constituted
himself master of ceremonies. He stepped lightly upon the near plank to
reconnoitre. He walked painstakingly from board to board. He was dealing
in precious freight—he would draw no rash conclusions. When he had
reached what he considered the middle of the channel, he returned and
pronounced it in his opinion safe, with proper care, and advised
strongly that no one step upon a plank till the one in front of him had
left it. Thus the weight of only one person at a time would materially
lessen the danger of the ice’s giving way. So the little procession took
up its line of march.
Gordon had planned that Louise should follow her uncle and he himself
would follow Louise; thus he might rest assured that there would be no
encroachment upon her preserves. The officious songster, contrary to
orders, glided ahead of his place when the line of march was well taken
up—usurping anybody’s plank at will, and trotting along over the bare
ice until finally he drew alongside Louise with an amiable grin.
“I will be here ready for emergencies,” he confided, meaningly. “You
need not be afraid. If the ice breaks, I will save you.”
“Get back, you fool,” cried Gordon, fiercely.
“And leave this young lady alone? Not so was I brought up, young man,”
answered Lawson, with great dignity. “Give me your hand, miss, I will
steady you.”
Louise shrank from his touch and stepped back to the end of her plank.
“Get on that plank, idiot!” cried Gordon, wrathfully. “And if you dare
step on this lady’s board again, I’ll wring your neck. Do you hear?”
He had stepped lightly off his own plank for a moment while he drew
Louise back to it. The ice gave treacherously, and a little pool of
water showed where his foot had been. Louise faltered.
“It—it—flows so fast,” she said, nervously.
“It is nothing,” he reassured her. “I will be more careful another
time.”
It was a perilous place for two. He hurried her to the next board as
soon as the subdued transgressor had left it, he himself holding back.
It was indeed an odd procession. Dark figures balanced themselves on the
slim footing, each the length of a plank from the other, the line
seeming to stretch from bank to bank. It would have been ludicrous had
it not been for the danger, which all realized. Some half-grown boys,
prowling along the Velpen shore looking for safe skating, gibed them
with flippant rudeness.
Lawson took fire.
“Whoop ’er up, boys,” he yelled, waving his hat enthusiastically.
He pranced up gayly to the Judge, tripping along on the bare ice.
“Your arm, your honor,” he cried. “It is a blot on my escutcheon that I
have left you to traverse this danger-bristling way alone—you, the
Judge. But trust me. If the ice breaks, I will save you. I swim like a
fish.”
“My friend,” said Dale, fixing on him eyes of calm disapproval, “if you
are the cause of my being forced to a cold-water plunge bath against my
wishes, I will sentence you to the gallows. Now go!”
He went. He was hurt, but he was not deterred. He would wait for the
lady. A gentleman could do no less. Louise stopped. Gordon stopped. The
whole back line stopped. Each man stood to his colors and—his plank.
Louise, glancing appealingly over her shoulder, gave an hysterical
little laugh.
“Move on!” cried Gordon, impatiently.
Instead of moving on, however, Lawson came confidently toward Louise.
She stifled a little feminine scream in her handkerchief and stepped
hastily backward.
“Don’t be afraid,” said Lawson.
Gordon repressed a rising oath, and cried out, “If you dare—,” but
Lawson had already dared. His heavy step was upon Louise’s frail
support. She thought shudderingly, intuitively, of the dark, swift,
angry current under its thin veneer of ice—the current that was always
hungry and ate islands and fertile fields in ravenous mouthfuls. She ran
back to the end of her plank.
“Have no fear,” said the drunken man, blandly. He stepped to the bare
ice at her side. “A man can’t walk pigeon-toed always,” he confided.
“Besides, there’s not a particle of danger. These fools are making a
mountain of a mole-hill.”
Gordon came forward quickly.
“Run ahead, Miss Dale, I’ll tend to this fellow,” he said.
He extended a firm hand. He meant to clutch the man, shove him behind,
and keep him there. But at that moment the ice began to give under
Lawson’s clumsy feet. A look of blank, piteous helplessness came into
his drunken eyes as he felt the treacherous ice sinking beneath him. He
tottered, then, with frantic, unthinking haste, and sprang to the plank,
but it, too, began to sink. He laid desperate hold of the girl.
“Save me!” he shrieked.
Louise was conscious only of a quick, awful terror, a dreadful horror of
swaying and sinking, and then she was muffled against a rough coat,
strong arms clasped her tightly and bore her backward. Shivering, she
hid her face in the coat, clutching the lapels with nervous strength.
“You’ll spoil your Sunday clothes,” she moaned, trying desperately to be
calm and sensible.
And Gordon held her at last as he had dreamed in his mad moments of
holding her—close against his heart—in the place he had not dared to
tell her he had already put her. His face was pressed against the fair
hair that he had longed with an indescribable longing to caress such a
short time ago. His lips brushed the soft strands with infinite
tenderness. Now was his dream come true. This day was his. No one might
take it from him. To-morrow,—but that was to-morrow. To-day was his. He
would live it to the end. Closer he held her,—the dear woman,—there was
no one else in all the world. When he released her, she was confronting
a man whose face was as white as the ice around them.
“Is this—the last of us?” she questioned, tremulously.
He flung his arm over her shoulders again. He did not know exactly what
he did. Men were coming forward rapidly, aware that a great tragedy had
threatened, had been averted. Dale was hastily retracing his steps.
Lawson had crawled to a place of safety on a forward plank after having
been flung out of the way by Gordon in his swift rush for Louise. He was
grinning foolishly, but was partially sobered by the shock.
“Back! All of you!” cried Gordon, imperiously. He was very pale, but he
had regained his self-control. “Idiots! Do you want another accident?
Back to your places! We’ll have to go around.”
The ice was broken in many spots. Louise had really gone through, but so
quick had been her rescue that she escaped with wet feet only. By making
a portable bridge of two of the planks, they skirted the yawning hole in
safety. It was a more dangerous undertaking now that two must stand on a
plank at the same time. Luckily, the greater number were ahead when the
accident occurred. It was not much past noon,—but Gordon’s day was
ended. It was as if the sun had gone down on it. He found no opportunity
to speak to Louise again, and the to-morrow, his to-morrow, had come.
But the one day had been worth while.