It was a repetition of the first night,--the same churning of the
plows, the same smaller machines working along the right of way to keep
the rails clear of drifting snow and ice particles, the wind howling
again and carrying the offal of the plows in gigantic spouts of dirty
white high into the air, to lash and pulverize it, then swish it away
to the icy valleys beneath, where drifts could do no harm, where there
were no struggling crews and dogged, half-dead men.
A repetition of the foul-smelling wooden tunnels, the sulphur fumes,
the gasping of stricken men. The same long, horrible hours, the same
staggering release from labor and the welcome hardness of a sleeping
spot on a wooden floor. Night after night it was the same--starlight
and snow, fair weather and storm. Barry Houston had become a
rough-bearded, tattered piece of human machinery like all the rest.
Then, at last--
The sun! Shining faintly through the windows of the bunk car, it
caused him to stir in his sleep. Dropping in a flood of ruby red, it
still reflected faint streaks of color across the sky, when at last he
started forth to what men had mentioned but seldom, and then with fear.
For to-night was the last night, the last either in the struggle or in
the lives of those who had fought their way upward to the final
barricade which yet separated them from the top of the world,--the
Death Trail.
Smooth and sleek it showed before Houston in the early moonlight, an
icy Niagara, the snow piled high above the railroad tracks, extending
upward against an almost sheer wall of granite, in stacks and drifts,
banked in places to a depth of a hundred feet. Already the plows were
assembled,--four heavy steel monsters, with tremendous beams lashed in
place and jutting upward, that they might break the overcasts and knock
down the snow roofings that otherwise might form tunnels, breaking the
way above as the tremendous fan of the plow would break it below. This
was to be the fight of fights, there in the moonlight. Houston could
see the engines breathing lazily behind their plows, sixteen great,
steel contrivances, their burdens graduated in size from the tremendous
auger at the fore to the lesser, almost diminutive one, by comparison,
at the rear, designed to take the last of the offal from the track.
For there would be no ice here; the drippings of the snowsheds, with
their accompanying stalactites and stalagmites, were absent. A quick
shoot and a lucky one. Otherwise,--the men who went forward to their
engines would not speak of it. But there was one who did.
She was standing beside the cook car as Houston passed, and she looked
toward him with a glance that caused Barry to stop and to wait, as
though she had called to him. Hesitatingly she came forward, and
Houston's dulled mentality at last took cognizance that a hand was
extended slightly.
"You're still working on the engine?"
"Yes."
"Then you'll be with them?"
"On the Death Trail? I expect to."
"They talk of it as something terrible. Why?"
Houston pointed to the forbidding wall of snow. His thick, broken lips
mumbled in the longest speech he had known in days.
"It's all granite up there. The cut of the roadbed forms a base for
the remainder of the snow. It's practically all resting on the tracks;
above, there's nothing for the snow to cling to. When we cut out the
foundation--they're afraid that the vibration will loosen the rest and
start an avalanche. It all depends whether it comes before--or after
we've passed through."
"And you are not afraid?" She asked it almost childishly. He shook
his head.
"I--don't know. I guess every one is--a bit afraid, when they're going
into trouble. I know what I'm doing, if that's what you mean."
She was silent for a long moment, looking up at the packed drifts, at
the ragged outlines of the mountains against the moonlit sky, then into
the valleys and the shimmering form of the round, icy lake, far below.
Her lips moved, and Barry went closer.
"Beg pardon?"
"Nothing--only there are some things I can't understand. It doesn't
seem quite natural--"
"What?"
"That things could--" Then she straightened and looked at him with
clear, frank eyes. "Mr. Houston," came quietly, "I've been thinking
about something all day. I have felt that I haven't been quite
fair--that a man who has acted as you have acted since--since I met you
this last time--that he deserves more of a chance than I have given
him. That--"
"I'm asking nothing of you, Miss Robinette."
"I know. I am asking something of you. I want to tell you that I have
been hoping that you can some day furnish me the proof--that you spoke
of once. I--that's what I wanted to tell you," she ended quickly and
extended her hand. "Good-by. I'll be praying for all of you up there."
Houston answered only with a pressure of his hand. His throat had
closed suddenly. His breath jerked into his lungs; his burning,
wind-torn lips ached to touch the hand that had lingered for a moment
in his. He looked at her with eyes that spoke what his tongue could
not say, then he went on,--a shambling, dead-tired man, even on awaking
from sleep, but a man whose heart was beating with a new fervor. She
would be praying for all of them up there at the Trail. And all of
them included him.
At the cab of the engine, he listened to the final instructions of the
cursing, anxious superintendent, then went to his black work of the
shovel. Higher and higher mounted the steam on the gauge; theirs was
the first plow, theirs the greatest task. For if they did not go
through, the others could not follow; if their attack were not swift
enough, staunch enough, the slide that was sure to come sooner or later
would carry with it mangled machinery and the torn forms of men into a
chasm of death. One by one the final orders came,--crisp, shouted,
cursing commands, answered in kind. Then the last query:
"If there's a damn man of you who's a coward, step out! Hear that? If
you're afraid--come on--there's no stopping once you start!"
Engine after engine answered, in jeering, sarcastic tones, the
belligerent cries of men hiding what pounded in their hearts, driving
down by sheer will-power the primitive desires of self-preservation.
Again was the call repeated. Again was it answered by men who snarled,
men who cursed that they might not pray. And with it:
"A-w-w-w-w--right! Let 'er go!"
The whistles screamed. Up the grade, four engines to a plow, the jets
of steam shrilling upward, coughing columns of smoke leaping blackly up
the mountain side, the start was made, as the great, roaring mass of
machinery gathered speed for the impact.
A jarring crash that all but threw the men of the first crews from
their feet, and the Death Trail had been met. Then churning, snarling,
roaring, the snow flying in cloud-like masses past them, the first plow
bit its way deep into the tremendous mass, while sweating men, Barry
Houston among them, crammed coal into the open, angry fire boxes, the
sand streamed on greasy tracks,--and the cavalcade went on.
A hundred yards,--the beams knocking down the snow above and all but
covering the engines which forced their way through, only to leave as
high a mass behind; while the whole mountain seemed to tremble; while
the peaks above sent back roar for roar, and grim, determined men
pulled harder than ever at the throttles and waited,--for the breath of
night again, or the crash of the avalanche.
A shout from Old Andy. A pull at the whistle, screeching forth its
note of victory. From in front was it answered, then from the rear,
and on and on, seemingly through an interminable distance, as moonlit
night came again, as the lesser plows in the rear swept their way clear
of the Death Trail and ground onward and upward. But only for a
moment. Then, the blare of the whistles was drowned in a greater
sound, a roar that reverberated through the hills like the bellow of a
thousand thunders, the cracking and crashing of trees, the splintering
of great rocks as the snows of the granite spires above the Death Trail
loosed at last and crashed downward in an all-consuming rush of
destruction. Trees gave way before the constantly gathering mass of
white, and joined in the downfall. Great boulders, abutting rocks,
slides of shale! On it went, thundering toward the valley and the
gleaming lake, at last to crash there; to send the ten-foot thicknesses
of ice splintering like broken glass; to pyramid, to spray the whole
nether world with ice and snow and scattering rock; then to settle, a
jumbled conglomerate mass of destructiveness, robbed of its prey.
And the men shouted, and screamed and beat at one another in their
frenzy of happiness, in spite of the fact that the track had been torn
away from behind them as though it never had existed, and that they now
were cut off entirely from the rest of the world. Only one snowshed
remained, with but a feeble bulwark of drifts before it. Already
lights were gleaming down the back-stretch, engines were puffing
upward, bearing ties and rails and ballast and abuttment materials, on
toward the expected, with men ready to repair the damage as soon as it
was done. There were cries also from there below, the shouts of men
who were glad even as the crews of the engines and plows were glad, and
the engineers and firemen leaned from their cabs to answer.
Still the whistles screamed; all through the night they screamed, as
drift after drift yielded, as the eight-foot bite of the first giant
auger gnawed and tore at the packed contents of the last shed atop
Crestline; then roared and sang, while the hills sent back their
outbursts with echoes that rolled, one into another, until at last the
whole world was one terrific out-pouring of explosive sounds and
shrill, shrieking blasts, as though the mountains were bellowing their
anger, their remonstrance at defeat. Eight feet, then eight feet more;
steadily eight feet onward. Nor did the men curse at the sulphur
fumes, nor rail at the steel-blue ice. It was the final fight; on the
downgrade were lesser drifts, puny in comparison to what they had gone
through, simple, easily defeated obstacles to the giant machinery,
which would work then with gravity instead of against it. Eight feet
more--eight feet after that; they marked it off on the windows of the
engine cabs with greasy fingers and counted the hours until success.
Night faded. Dawn came and then,--the sun! Clear and brilliant with
the promise of spring again and of melting snows. The fight was the
same as over.
Sleep,--and men who laughed, even as they snored, laughed with the
subconscious knowledge of success, while the bunk cars which sheltered
them moved onward, up to the peak, then started down the range. Night
again,--and Houston once more in the engine cab. But this time, the
red glare of the fire-box did not show as often against the sky; the
stops were less frequent for the ice packs; once the men even sang!
Morning of the second day,--and again the sunshine, causing dripping
streams from the long, laden branches of the pines and spruce, filling
the streams bank-full, here and there cutting through the blanket of
white to the dun-brown earth again. Work over, Houston leaned out the
door of the bunk car, drinking in the sunshine, warm for the first time
in weeks, it seemed,--and warm in heart and spirit. If she would only
keep her promise! If she would allow Medaine to see her! If she would
tell her the truth,--about the contract, the lease, and most of all
that accusation. If--
The whistles again,--and crowded forms at the doors of the cars.
Tabernacle was in the distance, while men and women waded through the
soggy snows to be the first to reach the train. Happiness gleamed on
the features of the inhabitants of a beleagured land shut away from the
world for weeks, men and women who saw no shame in the tears which
streamed down their cheeks, and who sought not to hide them. Eagerly
Barry searched the thronging crowd, at last to catch sight of a
gigantic figure, his wolf-dog beside him. He leaped from the car even
before it had ceased to move.
"Ba'tiste!" he called. "Ba'tiste!"
Great arms opened wide. A sob came from the throat of a giant.
"_Mon_ Baree! _Mon_ Baree!" It was all he could say for a moment.
Then, "_Mon_ Baree, he have come back to Ba'teese. Ah, Golemar! _Mon_
Baree, he have come back, he have come back!"
"We've won, Ba'tiste! The line's open--they'll be running trains
through before night. And if she keeps her promise--"
"She?" Ba'tiste stared down at him. They had drawn away from the rest
of the excited, noisy throng. "She? You mean--"
"Agnes. You've been taking care of her, haven't you? I found her--she
promised that she would tell the truth for me when I got back, that she
would explain the lease and contract and tell Medaine that it was all a
lie. She--"
But Ba'tiste Renaud shook his head.
"No, Baree. Eet is the too late. I have jus' come--from there. I
have close her eyes."