IN THE BLIZZARD
The McClintocks decided after all not to put in a freight outfit to
Piodie. The Dodsons beat them to it by putting in a large number of
wagons as adjuncts to the stages they ran from Carson.
From Hugh’s partners word came at intervals of the progress made in
sinking the shaft of the Ground Hog, which was the name they had given
the mine. These messages reflected Budd’s enthusiasm. The postscript of
each of them, whether it came in the form of a letter or a word-of-mouth
greeting, was to the effect that he expected to strike the ledge now at
any time.
He wrote in one note:
Bald Knob is sure looking up. Ralph Dodson has done made some
locations above us, and two lads from American Flat of the name
of Jenson have staked out a claim just below us down the hill.
They’re running a tunnel in from the hillside. Well, Kid, look
out for news of a big strike soon. We’re sure right close to the
vein, looks like.
Hugh smiled when he read it. Budd had been on the verge of a discovery
so many times that his non-resident partner discounted the prophecy.
There was no use in building up hopes that would probably never be
realized.
In another letter the fat man mentioned a second piece of news. “Our
schoolmarm here, Miss Victoria Lowell, has begun scratching dirt right
lively on that claim you staked out for her. She has got a Swede on the
job, but she has been out ’most every Saturday to see how tricks are. I
notice Ralph Dodson has been mighty attentive to her. _You better drift
over, Kid, and do your assessment work on that claim if you aim to get
it patented in your name._ Me, if I was a high-stepping colt like you,
I’ll be doggoned if I’d let that smooth guy Dodson jump as rich a
prospect as the Little Schoolmarm.”
This time Hugh did not smile. Budd, of course, was on the wrong track.
He had leaped to the conclusion that Hugh was in love with the girl
because he had staked a claim for her, and in his blunt blundering way
he was giving his friend a tip. McClintock was troubled. He profoundly
distrusted Ralph Dodson, had disliked him from the first moment when
their eyes met. The fellow was a ravening wolf if he had ever seen one.
But he was handsome, well-dressed, the kind of man who is like wildfire
among women. He probably knew how to make love amazingly well.
And Vicky—impetuous, imperious little Vicky of the brave heart and
generous instincts—was just the girl to yield to the glamour of his
charm. He could see now her flashing face, finely cut like a rare
brilliant, full of fire and high lights. She had better be dead than the
wife of Ralph Dodson.
The thing worried him. It would not let him alone. At work and in his
leisure hours he thought of the girl with keen-edged anxiety. His
imagination began to play him tricks. At dusk, as he walked to his room,
he would see her filmily in front of him, moving like sweet music toward
the open arms of Dodson. Once she turned and gave Hugh her cryptic,
tantalizing smile.
Someone ought to interfere to save the girl from an event so ruinous. He
thought of telling Scot, but after all he had nothing better to go on
than the gossip of old Jim Budd.
On swift impulse he decided to go to Piodie himself. It would not do any
harm, anyhow, to have a look at the Ground Hog and see how it was
developing. While he was there maybe he could drop a casual hint to
Vicky. Perhaps he would discover that Budd’s warning was all moonshine.
Winter was white on the hills when Hugh started over the Geiger Grade to
Reno by stage. At Reno he found traffic tied up. The snow in the valleys
was deep and it drifted with the wind so fast that the cuts filled up
and prevented the stage from getting through. Hugh learned that a pack
train had broken trail the day before and had reached Stampede Notch in
safety. From there it was working across the divide to Piodie.
He bought a pair of snowshoes and set out on the long trip. The day was
warm and the snow soft. This made travel difficult, and McClintock made
slow progress until he was out of the Truckee Meadows. By afternoon he
was in the hills. The wind was whistling in gusts, sometimes wrathfully,
again in a plaintive whine. It was colder now and the snow less slushy.
In spite of fatigue he covered the miles faster than he had been able to
do in the valley.
Many times he glanced at the sky uneasily. It was heavy with dun clouds,
and unless he missed his guess snow would fall soon and in quantity.
Came dusk, and after dusk darkness. Hugh kept going. He was an old-timer
and could tell his direction by the wind, the dip of the land, and the
slope of the snow waves.
It was nearly midnight when he knocked at the door of a Mormon ranch
house and asked shelter for the night. Healthily fatigued in every
muscle, he slept like a schoolboy almost round the clock.
Before he took the road again it was noon. At intervals during the night
snow had fallen, but just now the storm had died down.
“Better stay another night,” the rancher advised. “Gettin’ her back up
for a blizzard, looks like.”
The taste of the air and the look of the sky backed his prophecy. There
was going to be more snow and a lot of it. Very likely there would be
snow and wind together. But Hugh did not want to be tied up for several
days in the hills. He decided to make a dash for Piodie. The town was
not more than twenty-five miles away. If his luck held he would be in by
supper time.
He had covered half the distance before the storm hit him hard. It began
with wind, heavy sweeping gusts of it driving over the hills and into
the ravines. Presently snow came, a hard sleet that pelted his face like
ground glass. The temperature was falling fast. Hugh set his teeth and
ploughed forward, putting his head down into the blizzard as a football
player does when he is bucking the line.
Young and warm-blooded though he was, the chill of the tempest bit to
his bones and sapped his vitality. The wind and the fine sleet were like
a wall that pressed closely and savagely on him. Now and again he raised
his head and took the full fury of the leaping storm to make sure that
he was still on the trail.
Far and near became relative words. The end of the world, as far as he
could tell, was almost within reach of his outstretched hand. The
whistle of the shrieking wind was so furious that it deadened all
sounds, even itself. The sleety snow was a silent stinging foe that
flogged him mile after mile as he wallowed on.
The afternoon had been dark, but an added murkiness told him that night
was at hand. He was nearly exhausted, and in the darkness, with the
raging blizzard all about him, he felt that directions would become
confused. He must be close to town now, but if he should get lost, a
quarter of a mile would be as far away as Carson.
And presently he knew that he was lost. He was staggering through the
deep snow on a hillside. Somehow he had got off the trail and it was
swallowed up in the bleak night. He had an extraordinary store of
strength, vitality, and courage. But it was not in human endurance to
stand up under the flailing of the wind and sleet that pelted him, to
keep going through the heavy drifts that had been swept into every
hollow and draw. The bitter cold penetrated closer to his heart. An
overpowering desire to lie down and sleep tugged at his will.
Not for a moment did he give up. One of his snowshoes was lost in a snow
bank. He kicked off the other. Now on his hands and knees, now on his
feet, weaving forward like a drunken man, all sense of direction gone,
he still plunged into the howling waste of desolation that hemmed him
in.
He followed the path of least resistance. It took him down hill into a
draw. His stumbling steps zigzagged toward a lower level and he followed
the arroyo to its mouth. A slight dip in the ground swung him to the
right.
His boots were clogged with snow. The muscles of his thighs were so
weary that each time he dragged a leg out of the drifts it felt as
though weighted with a cannon ball. There were times when he could make
ground only by throwing his body forward and beating down the white bank
that obstructed the way. Still he crawled on, an indomitable atom of
fighting humanity in a great frozen desert of death.
A groping hand struck something solid. The stiff fingers of the hand
searched the surface of the barrier. Hugh’s heart renewed hope. He had
come up against a pile of corded wood. It was cut in short lengths to
fit a stove. The chances were that somewhere within fifty feet of him
was a house.
But where? In what direction? The fury of the storm filled the night,
made it opaque as a wall. He could not see five feet in front of him.
The landmark that he had found he dared not leave, for if he wandered
from it the chances were that he would never find it again. It would be
of no use to shout. The shrieking wind would drown a voice instantly.
Yet he did call out, again and again.
The thing he did was born of the necessity of the situation. He dug
aside the snow from the top of the pile and with a loose piece of wood
hammered free others from the niche into which they were frozen. How he
did this he could never afterwards tell, for his muscles were so
paralyzed from cold that they would scarcely answer the call his will
made on them.
Then, hard and straight, he flung a stick out into the storm. His
reserves of strength were nearly gone, but he held himself to the job
before him. One after another he threw the pieces of firewood, following
a definite plan as to direction, in such a way as to make the place
where he stood the centre of a circle. His hope was to strike the house.
If he could do this, and if the door happened to be on the side of the
house nearest him, then the light of the lamp would perhaps penetrate
into the storm so that he could see it.
He knew it was a gamble with all the odds against him. He was backing a
series of contingencies each one of which must turn in his favour if he
was to win.
He collapsed on the woodpile at last from sheer physical exhaustion. For
a few moments he lay there, helpless, drifting toward that sleep from
which he would never awake in this world. But the will to live still
struggled feebly. He was of that iron breed which has won the West for
civilization against untold odds. It was not in him to give up as long
as he could force his tortured body forward.
Even now he did not forget the craft of the frontiersman which reads
signs and makes deductions from them. The corded wood was two lengths
deep. Near one end there was a sag in it two or three feet deep. This
depression was greater on the side next Hugh. He reasoned that it is
human nature to choose the easiest way. The people who lived in the
house would use first that part of the wood which was nearest. Therefore
it followed that the house must be on the same side of the corded pine
as he was, and it must be closest to the place from which the wood had
been carried to the kitchen stove.
He struck out at a right angle from the pile. Before he had gone three
steps he stumbled and fell. His prostration was so complete that he
could not at once get to his feet again. He lay inert for a time, then
crawled up again and lurched forward. A second time his knees buckled
under him. As he fell, an outstretched hand hit the wall of the house.
Weakly he felt his way along the wall till he came to a door. His hand
fumbled with the latch, but his frozen fingers could not work the catch.
He beat on the door.
It opened unexpectedly, and he plunged forward to the floor of the
cabin. He saw, as though a long way off, the faces of devils and of
angels lit by high lights. His body lost weight, and he floated into
space luxuriously. Pain and fatigue, devils and angels, all were blotted
out.