The first flakes were but the precursors of a heavy fall of snow that
almost immediately began, soundless, without wind, filling the air and
whitening the earth, and that was still continuing unabated two hours
later. It mantled the shoulders of the workmen and the withers of the
horses; it clogged the wheels of the fresnos so that dirt was moved
with ever-increasing difficulty; it veiled the flaring gasolene
torches and choked the night. Where a plow ran or a scraper scooped
earth, snow speedily obliterated the mark, and with the passing of
time both men and animals found it necessary to struggle more and more
desperately in the dirt cut against mud and snow and gloom.
Carrigan contracted his working line, placing the torches at shorter
intervals and keeping the scrapers in close succession. The foremen
informed him frequently that the men were growing exhausted and
rebellious, but he ordered them to hold the crews at the task. He and
Bryant moved to and fro constantly, giving encouragement or lending a
hand to help start a stalled fresno. By sheer power of their wills
they were combatting the snow, forcing the work ahead, deepening the
stretch of excavation that had been opened that afternoon; by iron
determination they were wrenching out the last spadeful of earth
possible and exacting the final ounce of man power before the snow had
its way.
The strange warmth continued. The temperature was not even down to
freezing and the men, muddied and wet to the knees, dripped with
perspiration, while the horses' flanks were soaked with both sweat and
melted snow. It was difficult to breathe, what with the heavy,
oppressive air and what with the fall of suffocating snow, constantly
growing thicker. Horses slipped and went down, but were raised again;
fresnos were mired, but freed once more; men gave out and were sent to
their camp. And the fight kept on.
But about eleven o'clock Bryant felt a cool puff of air on his cheeks,
light and of brief duration. It was followed by a second, this time
quicker and stronger, blowing from the northwest and sending the snow
a-scurry in a slanting fog of flakes past the flames of the torches.
He studied this change for a moment, then sought out Carrigan.
"Time to make a break for cover," he announced. "Wind is coming and
the devil will be to pay when once it picks up all this loose snow."
"Well, we're about at a standstill, anyway," was the reply. "I'll have
the crews draw the scrapers and plows off at one side where we can get
at them. I had a spare horse tent put at the disposal of the Mexicans,
and have had men in both camps piling baled hay all evening around the
big tents for windbreaks. We'll issue extra blankets and crowd the
crews into the shacks and mess quarters where there are stoves."
"What about water if our pipe freezes?"
"Then the horses will eat snow like the range ponies, I guess--and the
rest of us, too."
At that he went off to order the work stopped, as did Bryant. For some
time the wind blew only in those fitful puffs Lee had noted or died
down entirely for short periods; and of this fact the night shift took
advantage to assemble the fresnos and plows beside the canal and to
drive their horses to shelter. The crews of the north camp, being
fewer, got away first; and thither Bryant plowed through the snow with
them to see all made safe. When he returned, Carrigan was just herding
the last man and team toward the main camp. Together the contractor
and the engineer extinguished the torches, then made their way,
carrying a flare with them, toward the glow showing at the edge of the
camp, where an oil-soaked bale of hay burned as a guide. At their
backs the wind and snow blew with gradually increasing strength.
They made the rounds of the horse tents packed with animals, the mess
tents packed with workmen--with those men only come and those newly
aroused from sleep and gathered here--of the shacks, the hospital, the
engineers' headquarters and the big commissary tent, all crowded with
white men and Mexicans, steaming with moisture, smoking cigarettes and
pipes, giving off a rank smell of clay and human bodies and wet
clothes and horses, who talked and laughed and waited restlessly. The
pair waded around examining guy-ropes, stakes, the protective walls
raised of hay bales. They took advantage of a sudden dropping of the
wind to go among the small tents, thrusting their flares within each
and having a look, to make certain no sleeper of the day shift had
been overlooked. Then at last they stumbled up the street to Bryant's
shack.
The wind now had utterly died away. The snow had resumed its thick,
silent fall straight to earth. Carrigan was kicking his boots clean
against the door-sill when Lee exclaimed, "Listen to that, Pat!"
Carrigan wiped the moisture from his ears and harkened.
"That's the Limited coming, and making no stops," he remarked. "Get
in!"
They entered the little building. The office contained the engineering
staff and several others. Tobacco smoke lay thick in the room.
Outside, the faint whining sound was growing steadily in volume until
at last it deepened into a roar very like that of an approaching
express train, as Pat had suggested. Followed a smart blow on the
shack. Then it reeled and the night was filled with a howling tumult
that deafened the men inside; the blizzard had burst upon the mesa.
Through the windows one could see nothing, for the air had become a
black maelstrom of whirling snow and darkness where a choked roar
persisted as steadily as the bass thunder of Niagara. The warmth had
vanished; a cutting cold, as if striking direct from arctic ice,
minute by minute drove the mercury in the thermometer on Bryant's wall
downward with unbelievable swiftness. If anything, the fury of the
storm seemed to increase as time passed, swelling to such terrible
violence that one imagined nothing could withstand its force, its mad
blasts, its deadliness.
"Those mess tents and horse tents," Lee said to Carrigan, anxiously.
"They're safer under their lee of hay than is this little paper box
we're sitting in," the contractor replied. "I've been through
blizzards before, and know how to meet them."
From by the stove one of the engineers spoke.
"But we'll never see some of those little tents any more. There are
several travelling toward Mexico by now."
"And my new flannel shirt!" cried another, suddenly. "Washed it this
noon and hung it out on a line and forgot all about it. Oh, Lord,
where is it now?"
"Good-bye, little shirt, we'll never see you more!" said the first,
sentimentally. "You'll be hanging on the Equator by morning."
"While we're left here in the drifts," said a third. "Oh, the lovely,
big, white drifts there'll be to-morrow!"
Toward one o'clock the first furious rush of the storm had passed and
it had settled into a fifty-mile-an-hour wind, bitterly cold, with
snow that drove against the building in fine particles. Freezing air
never ceased to enter the thin walls of boards and tar paper. It was
necessary to keep the cast-iron stove red-hot to secure anything like
comfort.
And to this dreadful cold and snow, thought Lee, Imogene would have
been left deliberately by Ruth Gardner and Gretzinger!
Carrigan bade the others roll up in their blankets and get what sleep
they could while he and Bryant tended the fire. Lee saw that Dave was
warm and well-wrapped. The men, worn out by prolonged exertions, made
themselves beds on the floor or stretched themselves out on their
seats, drew their coverings closer, closed their eyes, slept.
The contractor and the engineer, together before the fire, continued
to talk in low tones.
"Haven't told you yet," said Pat, presently, "but we picked up that
Mexican this evening who was trying to start a drunk Christmas Eve. It
was while you were at Sarita Creek. Saurez told me he had sneaked into
camp and meant mischief. Some of us caught him behind the commissary
tent with a can of oil, just ready to fire the camp."
"A fine night for us all to have been left without shelter," Lee
remarked. "Where is he?"
"In the hospital tied up, with a trusty man to watch him. Here's what
I found on him. Look inside." And Pat handed over a dirty leather bag
with a long string. "Found this around his neck."
Lee extracted four pieces of paper from the sack--all checks drawn to
the order of F. Alvarez. Besides these there were two twenty-dollar
gold pieces, three rings, and several unset turquoises.
"Well, we can make use of these checks," he said, after thought. "I'll
talk to the fellow to-morrow." He restored the miscellaneous
collection of property to the sack.
On the panes of the small windows the snow beat and the wind hammered.
Carrigan stuffed the stove with pine knots. Afterward he refilled his
pipe, cast a sharp glance about at the sleeping occupants of the room,
and said:
"You've got what you need now to mix medicine with the banker." He
confirmed his words with several satisfied nods.
"Yes," said Bryant.
Carrigan proceeded to meditate.
"Awhile back I sent for some more dynamite," he stated, breaking the
silence. "Didn't say anything to you about it at the time. It was
there in the commissary tent under a stack of cases of peaches and
bags of coffee. If this Alvarez had got his oil on that canvas and a
fire going, there sure would have been some fire-works. You would have
had a reservoir blown right in the middle of your project, I'm
thinking."
"What in the name of heaven do you want with dynamite!"
"Well, my boy, there's a lot of ground that can't be dug, but I never
saw any that nitro wouldn't move. What I got is dirt-blowing dynamite,
the kind powder companies sell for making drainage ditches and blowing
stumps and so on. I didn't know whether I should have to use it, but I
always like to have a trick up my sleeve. Powder is ordinarily too
expensive to employ when fresnos can work, yet it's just the thing in
a pinch. We're in an emergency now. If it should set in and snow right
along, with one storm on top of another, as may happen after so long a
mild season, powder even may not help us out. These last eight hundred
yards are going to make us weep before we're through, I'm guessing.
But just the same, I'm counting on this dynamite. It can't blow like
this forever, and the minute it quits we'll grab hold."
Lee twisted about to look at a window. The particles of snow were
biting at the glass relentlessly, while the howl of the gale told only
too plainly how the drifts were being heaped on the dark mesa.
"We'll finish this ditch on time even if hell freezes over," he said,
slowly. "I'm not going to be beaten at this late day."
He continued to sit gazing at the frosted panes and harkening to the
roaring blasts. On the floor and in the chairs the blanketed men slept
heavily. Pat fed the fire anew. But through the cracks of the walls
the cold sifted more and more intense, while along the edges of the
boards there formed thick fringes of glistening frost.