"It's hell on the squatters," Rivers replied, for want of other words.
"I don't know what they'll do. No money and no work for most of them.
They'll have to burn hay. If it hadn't been for the price on buffalo
bones, I guess some of them would starve."
Rising from the table, Bailey moved about doing up the work. He was very
thoughtful, and the constraint increased in tension.
The storm steadily increased. Its lashings of sleet grew each hour more
furious. The cabin did not reel, for it sat close in a socket of
sods--it endured in the rush of snow like a rock set in the swash of
savage seas. The icy dust came in around the stovepipe and fell in a
fine shower down upon Bailey's hands, fell with a faintly stinging
touch, and the circle of warmth about the fire grew less wide each hour.
"If the horses don't all freeze we'll be in luck," said he.
The stove roared as a chained leopard might do in answer to a lion
outside. Slender mice came from their dark corners and skittered across
the floor before the silent men, their sleek sides palpitating with
timorous excitement.
Bailey hovered over the stove, trying to figure up some accounts. Rivers
sat beside Blanche. With watchful care he kept her shawl upon her
shoulders and her feet wrapped in a blanket. He spoke to her now and
then in a voice inaudible to Bailey, who studied them with an occasional
keen glance.
"Well, now," he said, at last, "no use sitting here like images; we
might as well turn in. Jim, you take the bunk over there; and, Mrs.
Burke, you occupy the bed. I'll make up a shake-down here by the stove
and keep the fire going."
Rivers sullenly acquiesced, and Blanche lay down without removing her
outside garments, in the same bed in which she had slept that first
night in this wild land--that beautiful, buoyant spring night. How far
away it all was now!
Rivers heaped blankets upon her and tenderly tucked her in, whispered
good-night, and without a word to Bailey rolled himself in a fur robe and
stretched himself on his creaking, narrow couch.
So, in the darkness, while the storm intensified with shrieking, wild
voices, with whistling roar and fluttering tumult, Bailey gave his whole
thought to the elemental war within. His mind went out first to Burke,
who seemed some way to be the wronged man and chief sufferer, cut off
from help, alone in the cold and snow. By contrast, Rivers seemed
lustful and savage and treacherous.
Such a drama had never before come into Bailey's life. He had read of
somewhat similar cases in the papers, and had passed harsh judgment on
the man and woman. He had called the woman wanton and the man a villain,
but here the verdict was less easy to render. He liked Mrs. Burke, and
he loved his friend. He had looked into their faces many times during
the last six months without detecting any signs of degradation; on the
contrary, Blanche had apparently grown in womanly qualities; and as for
Jim, he had never been more manly, more generous and kind. If their acts
were crimes, why could they remain so clear of eye?
Without reaching a conclusion, he put the question from him and willed
himself to sleep.
When he awoke it was morning, but there was no change in the wind,
except in an increase of its ferocity. The roar was still steady,
high-keyed, relentless. A myriad new voices seemed to have joined the
screaming tumult. The cold was still intense.
He looked at his watch and found it marking the hour of sunrise, but
there was no light. The world was only a gray waste. He renewed the
fire, and began preparations for breakfast, his sturdy heart undismayed
by the demons without. Rivers, awakened by the clatter of dishes, rose
and scraped a peep-hole in a window-pane. Nothing could be seen but a
chaos of snow.
"No moving out of here to-day," he muttered, with a sullen curse.
Bailey assumed a cheerful tone.
"No; we're in for another day of it."
Inwardly he was appalled at the thought of what the long hours might
bring to him. To spend twenty-four hours more in this terrible
constraint would be ghastly. He set about the attempt to break it up.
He whistled and sang at his work, calling out to his partner as if there
were no evil passions between them.
"This is the fourth blizzard this month. Good thing they didn't come
last winter. This land wouldn't have been settled at all. What do you
suppose these poor squatters will do?"
Rivers did not respond.
Blanche tried to rise, but turned white and dizzy, and fell back upon
the bed, seized with a sudden weakness. Rivers brought her some tea and
sat by her side, while Bailey again toasted some bread for her. She
looked very weak and ill.
Bailey went out to feed the horses, glad of the chance to escape his
problem for a moment. Finding Rivers still sullen upon his return, he
got out some old magazines and read them aloud. Rivers swore under his
breath, but Blanche listened to the reading with relief. The stories
dealt mostly with young people who wished to marry, but were prevented
by somebody who wished them to "wed according to their station." They
were innocent creatures who had not known any other attachment, and
their bliss was always complete and unalloyed at the end.
Bailey read the tender passages in the same prosaic tone with which he
described the shipwreck, and his elocution would have been funny to any
other group of persons; as it was, neither of his hearers smiled.
Blanche's heart was filled with rebellion. Why could she not have known
Jim in the days when she, too, was young and innocent like the heroines
of these stories?
At noon, when Rivers went out to feed the team, Bailey went over toward
the wretched woman. His face was kind but firm:
"Mrs. Burke, I hope you've decided not to do this thing."
She looked at him with shrinking eyes.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean you can't afford to go away with Jim this way."
"What else can I do? I can't live without him, and I can't go back."
"Well, then, go away alone. Go back to your folks."
"Oh, I can't do that! Can't you see," she said, finding words with
effort--"can't you see, I _must_ go? Jim is my real husband. I must be
true to him now. My folks can't help me--nobody can help me but Jim--If
he stands by me, I can live." She stopped, feeling sure she had
explained nothing. It was so hard to find words.
"There must be some way out of it," he replied, and his hesitation
helped her. She saw that he was thinking upon the problem, and found it
not at all a clear case against her.
After Rivers came back they resumed their seats about the fire, talking
about the storm--at least, Bailey talked, and Rivers had the grace to
listen. He really seemed less sullen and more thoughtful.
Outside the warring winds howled on. The eye could not penetrate the
veils of snow which streamed through the air on level lines. The
powdered ice rose from the ground in waves which buffeted one another
and fell in spray, only to rise again in ceaseless, tumultuous action.
There was no sky and no earth. Everything slid, sifted, drifted, or
madly swirled.
The three prisoners fell at last into silence. They sat in the dim,
yellow-gray dusk and stared gloomily at the stove, growing each moment
more repellent to one another. They met one another's eyes at intervals
with surprise and horror. The world without seemed utterly lost. Wailing
voices sobbed in the pipe and at the windows. Sudden agonized shrieks
came out of the blur of sound. The hours drew out to enormous length,
though the day was short. The windows were furred deep with frost. At
four o'clock it was dark, and, as he placed the lamp on the table,
Bailey said,
"Well, Jim, we're in for another night of it."
Rivers leaped up as if he had been struck.
"Yes, curse it. It looks as if it would never let up again." He raged up
and down the room with the spirit of blasphemy burning in his eyes. "I
wish I'd never seen the accursed country."
"Will you go feed the team, or shall I?" Bailey quietly interrupted.
"I'll go." And he went out into the storm with savage resolution, while
Bailey prepared supper.
"The storm is sure to end to-night," he said, as they were preparing for
sleep. As before, Blanche lay down upon the bed, Rivers took the bunk,
and Bailey camped upon the floor, content to see his partner well
bestowed.
Blanche, unable to sleep, lay for a long time listening to the storm,
thinking disconnectedly on the past and the morrow. The strain upon her
was twisting her toward insanity. The never-resting wind appalled her.
It was like the iron resolution of the two men. She saw no end to this
elemental strife. It was the cyclone of July frozen into snow, only more
relentless, more persistent--a tornado of frost. It filled her with such
awe as she had never felt before. It seemed as if she _must not
sleep_--that she must keep awake for the sake of the little heart of
which she had been made the guardian.
As she lay thus a sudden mysterious exaltation came upon her, and she
grew warm and happy. She cared no longer for any man's opinion of her.
She was a mother, and God said to her, "Be peaceful and hopeful." Light
fell around her, and the pleasant odors of flowers. She looked through
sunny vistas of oaks and apple-trees. Bees hummed in the clover, and
she began to sing with them, and her low, humming song melted into the
roar of the storm. She saw birds flying like butterflies over fields of
daisies, and her song grew louder. It became sweet and maternal--full of
lullaby cadences. As she lay thus, lovely and careless and sinless as a
prattling babe, her eyes fixed upon the gleam of lights in the dark, a
shaking hand was laid on her shoulder, and Rivers spoke in anxious
voice:
"What is it, Blanche?--are you sick?"
She looked at him drowsily, and at last slowly said: "No, Jim--I am
happy. See my baby there, in the sunshine! Isn't she lovely?"
The man grew rigid with fear, and the hair of his head moved. He thought
her delirious--dying, perhaps, of cold. He gathered her hands in his
and fell upon his knees.
"What is it, dear? What do you mean?"
"Nothing, nothing," she murmured.
"You're sure you're not worse? Can't I help you?"
She did not reply, and he knelt there holding her hands until she sank
into unmistakably quiet sleep.
He feared the unspeakable. He imagined her taken in premature
childbirth, brought on by exposure and excitement, and, for the first
time, he took upon himself the burden of his guilt. The thought of
danger to her had not hitherto troubled him. For the poor, weak fool of
a husband he cared nothing; but this woman was his, and the child to
come was his. Birth--of which many men make a jest--suddenly took on
majesty and terror, and the little life seemed about to enter a world
of storm which filled him with a sense of duty new to him.
He bent down and laid his cheek against his woman's hands, and his
throat choked with a passionate resolution. He put his merry, careless
young manhood behind him at that moment and assumed the responsibilities
of a husband.
"May God strike me dead if I don't make you happy!" he whispered.