And to think that you're the man with the mines and the railroads and
the widow! I'm afraid you'll be in irons when she sees you, but--that's
as good a finish as you deserve, after all."
XXV
PREPARATIONS
The building of the Salmon River bridge will not soon be forgotten by
engineers and men of science. But, while the technical features of the
undertaking are familiar to a few, the general public knows little
about how the work was actually done; and since the building of the
bridge was the pivotal point in Murray O'Neil's career, it may be well
to describe in some detail its various phases--the steps which led up
to that day when the Salmon burst her bonds and put the result of all
his planning and labor to the final test.
Nowhere else in the history of bridge-building had such conditions been
encountered; nowhere on earth had work of this character been attended
with greater hazards; never had circumstances created a situation of
more dramatic interest. By many the whole venture was regarded as a
reckless gamble; for more than a million dollars had been risked on the
chance not alone that O'Neil could build supports which the ice could
not demolish, but that he could build them under the most serious
difficulties in record-breaking time. Far more than the mere cost of
the structure hinged upon his success: failure would mean that his
whole investment up to that point would be wiped out, to say nothing of
the twenty-million-dollar project of a trunk-line up the valley of the
Salmon.
Had the Government permitted the Kyak coal-fields to be opened up, the
lower reaches of the S. R. & N. would have had a value, but all
activity in that region had been throttled, and the policy of delay and
indecision at headquarters promised no relief.
Careful as had been the plans, exhaustive and painstaking as had been
the preparations, the bridge-builders met with unpreventable delays,
disappointments, and disasters; for man is but a feeble creature whose
brain tires and whose dreams are brittle. It is with these hindrances
and accidents and with their effect upon the outcome that we have to
deal.
Of course, the greatest handicap, the one ever-present obstacle, was
the cold, and this made itself most troublesome in the sinking of the
caissons and the building of the concrete piers. It was necessary, for
instance, to house in all cement work, and to raise the temperature not
only of the air surrounding it, but of the materials themselves before
they were mixed and laid. Huge wind-breaks had to be built to protect
the outside men from the gales that scoured the river-bed, and these
were forever blowing down or suffering damage from the hurricanes. All
this, however, had been anticipated: it was but the normal condition of
work in the northland. And it was not until the middle of winter,
shortly after Eliza's and Natalie's visit to the front, that an
unexpected danger threatened, a danger more appalling than any upon
which O'Neil and his assistants had reckoned.
In laying his plans Parker had proceeded upon the assumption that, once
the cold had gripped the glaciers, they would remain motionless until
spring. All available evidence went to prove the correctness of this
supposition, but Alaska is a land of surprises, of contrasts, of
contradictions: study of its phenomena is too recent to make
practicable the laying down of hard and fast rules. In the midst of a
season of cruelly low temperatures there came a thaw, unprecedented,
inexplicable. A tremendous warm breath from the Pacific rolled
northward, bathing the frozen plains and mountain ranges. Blizzards
turned to rains and weeping fogs, the dry and shifting snow-fields
melted, water ran in the courses. Winter loosed its hold; its mantle
slipped. Nothing like this had ever been known or imagined. It was
impossible! It was as if the unhallowed region were bent upon living up
to its evil reputation. In a short time the loosened waters that
trickled through the sleeping ice-fields greased the foundations upon
which they lay. Jackson Glacier roused itself, then began to glide
forward like a ship upon its ways. First there came the usual
premonitory explosions--the sound of subterranean blasts as the ice
cracked, gave way, and shifted to the weight above; echoes filled the
sodden valley with memories of the summer months. It was as if the
seasons had changed, as if the zodiacal procession had been thrown into
confusion. The frozen surface of the Salmon was inundated; water four
feet deep in some places ran over it.
The general wonder at this occurrence changed to consternation when it
was seen that the glacier acted like a battering-ram of stupendous
size, buckling the river ice in front of it as if ice were made of
paper. That seven-foot armor was crushed, broken into a thousand
fragments, which threatened to choke the stream. A half-mile below the
bridge site the Salmon was pinched as if between two jaws; its smooth
surface was rapidly turned into an indescribable jumble of up-ended
cakes.
When a fortnight had passed O'Neil began to fear that this movement
would go on until the channel had been closed as by a huge sliding
door. In that case the rising waters would quickly wipe out all traces
of his work. Such a crumpling and shifting of the ice had never
occurred before--at least, not within fifty years, as the alder and
cottonwood growth on the east bank showed; but nothing seemed
impossible, no prank too grimly grotesque for Nature to play in this
solitude. O'Neil felt that his own ingenuity was quite unequal to the
task of combating this peril. Set against forces so tremendous and
arbitrary human invention seemed dwarfed to a pitiable insignificance.
Day after day he watched the progress of that white palisade; day after
day he scanned the heavens for a sign of change, for out of the sky
alone could come his deliverance. Hourly tests were made at the bridge
site, lest the ice should give way before the pressure from below and
by moving up-stream destroy the intricate pattern of piling which was
being driven to support the steelwork. But day after day the snows
continued to melt and the rain to fall. Two rivers were now boiling
past the camp, one hidden deep, the other a shallow torrent which ran
upon a bed of ice. The valley was rent by the sounds of the glacier's
snail-like progress.
Then, without apparent cause, the seasons fell into order again, the
mercury dropped, the surface-water disappeared, the country was sheeted
with a glittering crust over which men walked, leaving no trace of
footprints. Jackson became silent: once again the wind blew cold from
out of the funnel-mouth and the bridge-builders threshed their arms to
start their blood. But the glacier face had advanced four hundred feet
from its position in August; it had narrowed the Salmon by fully
one-half its width.
Fortunately, the bridge had suffered no damage as yet, and no one
foresaw the effect which these altered conditions were to have.
The actual erection of steelwork was impossible during the coldest
months; Parker had planned only to rush the piers, abutments, and
false-work to completion so that he could take advantage of the mild
spring weather preceding the break-up. The execution of this plan was
in itself an unparalleled undertaking, making it necessary to hire
double crews of picked men. Yet, as the weeks wore into months the
intricate details were wrought out one by one, and preparations were
completed for the great race.
Late in March Dan Appleton went to the front, taking with him his wife
and his sister, for whom O'Neil had thoughtfully prepared suitable
living-quarters. The girls were as hungry as Dan to have a part in the
deciding struggle, or at least to see it close at hand, for the spirit
of those engaged in the work had entered them also. Life at Omar of
late had been rather uneventful, and they looked forward with pleasure
to a renewal of those companionable relations which had made the summer
months so, full of interest and delight. But they were disappointed.
Life at the end of the line they found to be a very grim, a very
earnest, and in some respects an extremely disagreeable affair: the
feverish, unceasing activity of their friends left no time for
companionship or recreation of any sort. More and more they, too, came
to feel the sense of haste and strain pervading the whole army of
workers, the weight of responsibility that bore upon the commander.
Dan became almost a stranger to them, and when they saw him he was
obsessed by vital issues. Mellen was gruff and irritable: Parker in his
preoccupation ignored everything but his duties. Of all their former
comrades O'Neil alone seemed aware of their presence. But behind his
smile they saw the lurking worries; in his eyes was an abstraction they
could not penetrate, in his bearing the fatigue of a man tried to the
breaking-point.
To Eliza there was a certain joy merely in being near the man she
loved, even though she could not help being hurt by his apparent
indifference. The long weeks without sight of him had deepened her
feeling, and she had turned for relief to the writing of her book--the
natural outlet for her repressed emotions. Into its pages she had
poured all her passion, all her yearning, and she had written with an
intimate understanding of O'Neil's ambitions and aims which later gave
the story its unique success as an epic of financial romance.
Hers was a nature which could not be content with idleness. She took up
the work that she and Natalie had begun, devoting herself unobtrusively
yet effectively to making O'Neil comfortable. It was a labor of love,
done with no expectation of reward; it thrilled her, filling her with
mingled sadness and satisfaction. But if Murray noticed the improvement
in his surroundings, which she sometimes doubted, he evidently
attributed it to a sudden access of zeal on the part of Ben, for he
made no comment. Whether or not she wished him to see and understand
she could hardly tell. Somehow his unobservant, masculine acceptance of
things better and worse appealed to the woman in her. She slipped into
O'Neil's quarters during his absence, and slipped out again quietly;
she learned to know his ways, his peculiarities; she found herself
caressing and talking to his personal belongings as if they could hear
and understand. She conducted long conversations with the objects on
his bureau. One morning Ben entered unexpectedly to surprise her in the
act of kissing Murray's shaving-mirror as if it still preserved the
image of its owner's face, after which she banished the cook-boy
utterly and performed his duties with her own hands.
Of course, discovery was inevitable. At last O'Neil stumbled in upon
her in the midst of her task, and, questioning her, read the truth from
her blushes and her incoherent attempts at explanation.
"So! You're the one who has been doing this!" he exclaimed, in frank
astonishment. "And I've been tipping Benny for his thoughtfulness all
this time! The rascal has made enough to retire rich."
"He seemed not to understand his duties very well, so I took charge.
But you had no business to catch me!" The flush died from Eliza's
cheeks, and she faced him with thoroughly feminine indignation.
"I can't let you go on with this," said Murray. "_I_ ought to be doing
something for YOU."
But the girl flared up defiantly. "I love it. I'll do it, no matter if
you lock me out. I'm not on the pay-roll, you know, so you have no
authority over me--none at all!"
His eyes roved around the room, and for the first time he fully took in
the changes her hands had wrought.
"My dear child, it's very nice to be spoiled this way and have
everything neat and clean, but--it embarrasses me dreadfully to have
you saddled with the sordid work--"
"It isn't sordid, and--what brought you home at this hour, anyhow?" she
demanded.
O'Neil's smile gave place to an anxious frown.
"The ice is rising, and--"
"Rising?"
"Yes. Our old enemy Jackson Glacier is causing us trouble again. That
jam of broken ice in front of it is backing up the water--there's more
running now, and the ice is lifting. It's lifting the false-work with
it, pulling the piles out of the river-bottom like splinters out of a
sore hand."
"That's pretty bad, isn't it?"
"It certainly is. It threatens to throw everything out of alignment and
prevent us from laying the steel if we don't check it."
"Check it!" cried Eliza. "How can you check a thing like that?"
"Easily enough, if we can spare the hands--by cutting away the ice
where it is frozen to the piles, so that it won't lift them with it.
The trouble is to get men enough--you see, the ice is nine feet thick
now. I've set every man to work with axes and chisels and steam-points,
and I came up to telephone Slater for more help. We'll have to work
fast, night and day."
"There's nobody left in Omar," Eliza said, quickly.
"I know. Tom's going to gather all he can at Cortez and Hope and rush
them out here. Our task is to keep the ice cut away until help arrives."
"I suppose it's too late in the season to repair any serious damage?"
"Exactly. If you care to go back with me you can see what we're doing."
As they set off for the bridge site Murray looked down at Eliza,
striding man-like beside him, with something of affectionate
appreciation in his eyes, and said humbly: "It was careless of me not
to see what you have been doing for me all this time. My only excuse is
that I've been driven half mad with other things. I--haven't time to
think of myself."
"All housekeepers have a thankless task," laughed Eliza.
When they reached the river-bank she saw everything apparently just as
when she had last seen it. "Why, it's not as bad as I imagined!" she
exclaimed. "I thought I'd find everything going to smash."
"Oh, there's nothing spectacular about it. There seldom is about
serious mishaps in this business. The ice has risen only an inch or
more so far, but the very slowness and sureness of it is what's
alarming. It shows that the water is backing up, and as the flow
increases the rise of the ice will quicken. If it starts to move up or
down stream, we're lost."
There was ample evidence that the menace was thoroughly understood, for
the whole day shift was toiling at the ice, chopping it, thawing it,
shoveling it away, although its tremendous thickness made their efforts
seem puerile. Everywhere there was manifested a frantic haste, a grim,
strained eagerness that was full of ominous meaning.
All that day Eliza watched the unequal struggle, and in the evening Dan
brought her reports that were far from reassuring. The relentless
movement showed no sign of ceasing. When she retired that night she
sought ease from her anxiety in a prayer that was half a petition for
O'Neil's success and half an exceedingly full and frank confession of
her love for him. Outside, beneath the glare of torches and hastily
strung incandescents, a weary army toiled stubbornly, digging, gouging,
chopping at the foot of the towering wall of timbers which stretched
across the Salmon. In the north the aurora borealis played brilliantly
as if to light a council of the gods.
On the following day "Happy Tom" arrived with fifty men.
"I got the last mother's son I could find," he explained, as he warmed
himself at O'Neil's stove.
"Did you go to Hope?"
"I did, and I saw the splavvus, himself."
"Gordon?"
"He's worse than we thought." Tom tapped his shining forehead
significantly. "Loft to let!"
"What--insane?"
"Nothing but echoes in his dome. The town's as empty as his bonnet too,
and the streets are full of snow. It's a sight!"
"Tell me about Mrs. Gordon."
"She's quite a person," said Slater, slowly. "She surprised me. She's
there, alone with him and a watchman. She does all the work, even to
LUGGING in the wood and coal--he's too busy to help--but she won't
leave him. She told me that Dan and Natalie wanted her to come over
here, but she couldn't bring herself to do it or to let them assist in
any way. Gordon spends all his time at his desk, promoting, writing ads
and prospectuses. He's got a grand scheme. He's found that 'Hope
Consolidated' is full of rich ore, but the trouble is in getting it
out; so he's working on a new process of extraction. It's a wonderful
process--you'd never guess what it is. He SMOKES it out! He says all he
needs is plenty of smoke. That bothered him until he hit on the idea of
burning feathers. Now he's planning to raise ducks, because they've got
so much down. Isn't that the limit? She'll have to fit him into a
padded cell sooner or later."
"Poor devil!" said O'Neil. "I'm sorry. He had an unusual mind."
Slater sniffed. "I think it's pretty soft for him, myself. He's made
better than a stand-off--he lost his memory, but he saved his skin.
It's funny how some men can't fall: if they slip on a banana-peel
somebody shoves a cushion under 'em before they 'light. _I_ never got
the best of anything. If I dropped asleep in church my wife would
divorce me and I'd go to the electric chair. Gordon robs widows and
orphans, right and left, then ends up with a loving woman to take care
of him in his old age. Why, if I even robbed a blind puppy of a biscuit
I'd leave a thumb-print on his ear, or the dog's mother would turn out
to be a bloodhound. Anyhow, I'd spend MY declining years nestled up to
a rock-pile, with a mallet in my mit, and a low-browed gentleman
scowling at me from the top of a wall. He'd lean on his shotgun and
say, 'Hurry up, Fatty; it's getting late and there's a ton of oakum to
pick.' It just goes to show that some of us is born behind the game and
never get even, while others, like Gordon, quit winner no matter how
much they lose." Having relieved himself of this fervid homily, "Happy
Tom" unrolled a package of gum and thrust three sticks into his mouth.
"Speaking of bad luck," he continued, "when are you going to get
married, Murray?"
O'Neil started. "Why--never. It isn't the same kind of proposition as
building a bridge, you know. There's a little matter of youth and good
looks that counts considerably in the marriage business. No woman would
have an old chap like me."
Slater took a mournful inventory of his chief's person, then said
doubtfully: "You MIGHT put it over, Murray. I ain't strictly handsome,
myself, but I did."
As O'Neil slipped into his fur coat, after the fat man had slouched
out, he caught sight of himself in the glass of his bureau and paused.
He leaned forward and studied the care-worn countenance that peered
forth at him, then shook his head. He saw that the hair was growing
grayer; that the face was very plain, and--yes, unquestionably, it was
no longer youthful. Of course, he didn't feel old, but the evidence
that he was so admitted of no disproof, and it was evidence of a sort
which no woman could disregard. He turned from the glass with a qualm
of disgust at his weakness in allowing himself to be influenced in the
slightest by Tom's suggestion.
For a week the ice rose slowly, a foot a day, and in spite of the
greatest watchfulness it took the false-work with it here and there.
But concentrated effort at the critical points saved the structure from
serious injury. Then the jam in front of Jackson Glacier went out, at
least in part, and the ice began to fall. Down it settled, smoothly,
swiftly, until it rested once more upon the shores. It was still as
firm as in midwinter, and showed no sign of breaking; nor had it moved
down-stream a hair's breadth. O'Neil gathered his forces for the final
onslaught.
XXVI
THE RACE
On April 5th the last of the steel for Span Number One reached the
front, and erection was begun. The men fell to with a vim and an
enthusiasm impossible to describe. With incredible rapidity the heavy
sections were laid in place; the riveters began their metallic song;
the towering three bent traveler ran smoothly on its track, and under
it grew a web work of metal, braced and reinforced to withstand, in
addition to ordinary strains, the pressure of a hundred-mile-an-hour
wind. To those who looked on, the structure appeared to build itself,
like some dream edifice; it seemed a miracle that human hands could
work that stubborn metal so swiftly and with so little effort. But
every piece had been cut and fitted carefully, then checked and placed
where it was accessible.
Now that winter had broken, spring came with a rush. The snows began to
shrink and the drifts to settle. The air grew balmier with every day;
the drip from eaves was answered by the gurgling laughter of hidden
waters. Here and there the boldest mountainsides began to show, and the
tops of alder thickets thrust themselves into sight. Where wood or
metal caught the sun-rays the snow retreated; pools of ice-water began
to form at noon.
The days were long, too, and no frozen winds charged out of the north.
As the daylight lengthened, so did the working-hours of the toilers.
On April 18th the span was completed. In thirteen days Mellen's crew
had laid four hundred feet of the heaviest steel ever used in a bridge
of this type. But there was no halt; the material for the second
section had been assembled, meanwhile, and the traveler began to swing
it into place.
The din was unceasing; the clash of riveters, the creak and rattle of
hoists, the shouts of men mingled in a persistent, ear-splitting
clamor; and foot by foot the girders reached out toward the second
monolith which rose from the river-bed. The well-adjusted human machine
was running smoothly; every man knew his place and the duties that went
with it; the hands of each worker were capable and skilled. But now the
hillsides were growing bare, rills gashed the sloping snow-fields, the
upper gullies began to rumble to avalanches--forerunners of the process
that would strip the earth of snow and ice and free the river in all
its fury. In six days three hundred feet more of steel had been bolted
fast to the complete section, and Span Two was in place. But the
surface of the Salmon was no longer white and pure; it was dirty and
discolored now, for the debris which had collected during the past
winter was exposing itself. The icy covering was partially inundated
also; shallow ponds formed upon it and were rippled by the south
breeze. Running waters on every side sang a menace to the workers.
Then progress ceased abruptly. It became known that a part of the
material for the third span had gone astray in its long journey across
the continent. There had been a delay at the Pittsburg mills, then a
blockade in the Sierras; O'Neil was in Omar at the end of the cable
straining every nerve to have the shipment rushed through. Mellen
brooded over his uncompleted work: Parker studied the dripping hills
and measured the melting snows. He still smiled; but he showed his
anxiety in a constant nervous unrest, and he could not sleep.
At length news came that Johnny Brennan had the steel aboard his ship
and had sailed. A record run was predicted, but meanwhile the south
wind brought havoc on its breath. The sun shone hotly into the valley
of the Salmon, and instead of warmth it brought a chill to the hearts
of those who watched and waited.
Twelve endless, idle days crawled by. Winter no longer gave battle; she
was routed, and in her mad retreat she threatened to overwhelm O'Neil's
fortunes.
On May 6th the needed bridge members were assembled, and the erection
of Span Three began. The original plan had been to build this section
on the cantilever principle, so as to gain independence of the river
ice, but to do so would have meant slow work and much delay--an
expenditure of time which the terms of the option made impossible.
Arrangements had been made, therefore, to lay it on false-work as the
other spans had been laid, risking everything upon the weather.
As a matter of precaution the southern half of the span was connected
to the completed portion; but before the connection could be fully made
the remainder of the jam in front of Jackson Glacier, which had caused
so much trouble heretofore, went out suddenly, and the river ice moved
down-stream about a foot, carrying with it the whole intricate system
of supporting timbers beneath the uncompleted span. Hasty measurements
showed that the north end of the steel then on the false-work was
thirteen inches out of line.