THE LIFE LINE
There were smiles before comment began, as the minister finished his odd
story, which, as everybody seemed to feel, was told rather to distract
attention from the outlook in the present strait than as having any
serious application to the theme under discussion, and, for a time,
there was a departure from the subject. The wind still howled outside,
but the cold did not increase perceptibly. A more cheerful feeling had
obtained and the situation was now looked upon by most of the prisoners
as but one of the extraordinary incidents of Rocky Mountain travel.
The one woman had retired to her own car and Stafford, after a season of
wild imagining, had returned to earth again. He sat looking upon the
scene with a degree of interest.
Experienced and toughened man of the world as he chanced to be, he was
not lacking in keen sympathies, and he wondered, as he studied the faces
about him, how the test would be endured should the car be no longer
heated and the supply of food become exhausted before aid could reach
them? He had been snowbound before, and he knew the more than
uncomfortable possibilities of the case. There might be a more continued
fall of snow than any one anticipated. The howl of the wind had subsided
a little and was no longer so menacing in tone, but rather whistled and
muttered, as it tossed the masses of snow about. It seemed to Stafford
as indicating no increased fierceness of the storm but, instead, more
snow. The man who has experienced much of climes and seasons learns to
recognize a prophecy in the voice of the wind and to set his house in
order accordingly. In this case, Stafford had much rather have heard the
wind still giving utterance to its wolf's howls. Howls and bluster were
nothing, but an addition to the difficulties of the relief train was
what was most to fear. So Stafford did not like the wind's more
whimpering tones. The other passengers, with the exception of a grizzled
miner, and perhaps, a few others who had long known the Storm King
personally, appeared delighted at any abatement of the turmoil outside.
To them, lack of noise was proof of lack of peril.
It was the Colonel, that fine combination of Colonel Newcombe, Mr.
Macawber and an up-to-date retired American army officer, who gave
direction to the course of events again, as the discussion went on idly.
He broke in:
"What the minister told us regarding what was or was not a special
providence relieved us, certainly, for it gave us a conundrum, and
conundrums distract the mind, but we must keep the distraction up. Have
there been no other providential dispensations?" He turned to the miner,
whom he chanced to know well:
"Here, Jim, you who have been so long in the mountains, ought to be able
to tell us of escapes which seemed purely providential. Don't you know
of any such affair?"
The miner, who was diffident, and who, furthermore, spoke in mountain
phrase and with a queer stutter, tried to say that he really did know of
one such case, and the Colonel forced him to tell the story. Translated
into English--for it was with difficulty that the miner was understood,
and the Colonel, who was familiar with the account, gave most of
it--this is the story of what happened to a man and wife, not
altogether tenderfeet, in the hills, and what was accomplished by
THE LIFE LINE
Robert Felton was in luck when he met an Eastern girl in Salt Lake City.
He was from Chicago and she from Boston. An inveterate sportsman was
Felton and each autumn when he came out to visit a mine in which he was
interested the trip terminated with a hunting expedition which extended
sometimes to the very edge of the time of storms and snow. Once or twice
he and his companions had been nearly caught snowbound in the mountains
and he had acquired experience, not perhaps sufficient.
He met a tall bronze-haired, gray-eyed Catherine Murdoch who was on a
visit from the East--and that settled it. He fell in love a thousand
feet and wooed with all the vigor and persistency he might have
exhibited after elk or bear. It didn't take long. The splendid advance
of the tempestuous hunter-miner, business man, as cultivated as she too,
somehow fascinated the frigid beauty and she yielded in almost no time.
They met in June, were married in September and spent the winter and
spring and summer in Chicago. Then, with approaching autumn, came again
upon Felton the mountain fever, and he proposed the usual Western trip.
He was in love as deeply as ever and he was a considerate man.
"We'll go to Salt Lake City," he said, "and I'll attend to my
business--it's all in town there--and then, dear, you'll let me make a
hunting trip, won't you, while you stay in the city and have a good time
with Mary." Mary was Mrs. Felton's cousin.
"Where do you hunt, Bob?" inquired Mrs. Felton.
"Oh, generally away up a canyon which forks from one where a couple of
my friends have a mine. I've had a sort of shack built away up on the
side of this branch canyon, which is about five miles across country
from the mine, and, every fall, they send over a stock of
provisions--canned goods and flour, and sugar and tea and coffee--and
come over themselves when they can and hunt and fish with me. It will be
a little late this year."
"What sort of a place is this shack of yours?"
"It's fine. There are a cook stove and table and three chairs and a bed.
There's a window, too, and there's a lithograph of Li Hung Chang tacked
up on the wall. It's just voluptuous--makes you think of the Taj Mahal
on the outside and the boudoir of a Sultan's favorite in the inside.
It's a dream."
"Bob, I'm not going to stay in Salt Lake City. I'm going hunting with
you."
"What?"
The tone of the lady became just a shade pleading:
"Why not, Bob?"
"Madam, you're an honor to my home but in a shack in the mountains you
would be like La Cigale. Out of your fitting clime and place and your
own sweet season, you would perish as do the summer insects. So go the
ephemera. Why, dear, up in the shack there, it's only hunting, and
fishing, and climbing or falling and washing tin dishes and eating and
sleeping as sleep the dead and then doing the same things over again.
You're no jewel for such a setting."
The charming lady hesitated for a moment and then spoke very
thoughtfully and earnestly though, it must be admitted, with a certain
degree of cooingness.
"Bob, I'm afraid I've been negligent, perhaps criminally secretive--but
I have failed to make clear to you one side of my character. I wish you
to understand, sir, that I have been in the Adirondacks, season after
season, that I can swim like a duck, that I can cast a fly and that I
can shoot tolerably well. Furthermore I can cook almost anything in a
tin dish. Am I not going with you, Bob?"
There was some astonishment and a whoop, certain excusable
demonstrations and, two weeks later, his business concluded in Salt Lake
City, Felton and his wife were up in the cabin in the mountain and the
nickel had been fairly dropped in the Western slot.
It is wonderful when a man is afield with a man companion who
understands both him and the woods. It is more wonderful still when the
companion is a woman and the creature closest to him and understands all
things, as well. His old friends of the mining camp--came over and
hunted with him as usual and that fair veneered barbarian cooked
famously for them, like a laughing, chaffing squaw and added two more to
her list of her fervent admirers. Never were such happy days for Felton
as when he fished or hunted with his wife. Woman who well knew the
mountains, wise as well as beautiful woman, she had provided herself
with a suit for the time's exigency. Thick woolen was it, ending in
knickerbockers and stout shoes. There was a skirt which, by unclasping
its belt, could be taken on or off in an instant. She proved sturdy and
there is no occasion for the telling of the fishing and hunting records
of the two. They were most content and they lingered in the mountains.
One day--it was late for autumn--in the foothills--Jim Trumbull, one of
Felton's two mining friends over on a visit said abruptly:
"Felton, it's time to leave. We're all ready to skip."
"I think so too," said Felton. "Those first little snows seem ominous. I
think we'll get it early in the season. I intend to leave to-morrow
night. The burros are all ready."
But the next day Felton and his wife found tracks and hunting and a good
day of it, and so night found them still in the cabin. At eight o'clock
in the evening Felton went out and looked about. There was a great ring
around the moon, and the stars had a dim look, not like their usual
story. "It looks like the sky over Chicago," Felton muttered. He slept
uneasily and was awake at daylight looking anxiously from the cabin
door. The earth had changed. The universe was white. The earth was
white and the air was white. He leaped back into the cabin. Breakfast
over, the man who had forced himself to eat, said:
"Get a day's food, Kate, and get on your hunting dress, with thick
garments under it, as quickly as you can."
She did as he told her and he made swiftly a back load of the provisions
and her skirt and two great blankets. Well knew he that they must reach
Parson's Camp or be lost.
They plunged into the whiteness. They must cross the billowy tongue of
high land up and down lying between the two forks of the great canyon.
Across this mesa ran a rude trail which none knew better than did
Felton, but to feel and keep it with this white shroud of snow upon the
ground and in the air was a feat almost impossible. They plunged ahead
into the white depths, for the wind had made the snow deep in the
opening, and this depth, while it retarded their progress, was after all
a godsend. It aided Felton in keeping the trail. What need to tell of
the details of that awful day? Darkness was falling when Felton carried
an exhausted and senseless woman into Parson's Camp. There was no one
there. Felton struck a match and found a half-burned candle. He gave
his wife whiskey and water and, later, food, and she was soon herself,
for the trouble was but exhaustion. Then Felton sat down upon a chair
and figured the thing out aloud.
[Illustration: "THEY PLUNGED INTO THE WHITENESS"]
"They thought we'd gone and so did not pay any attention to us. They had
sense enough to skip in time."
His wife was up and beside him now.
"What of it?" she said, "we have shelter and warmth, and when it stops
snowing perhaps we can dig out"--seeing his face, she added--"anyway
we'll be rescued, somehow." Her husband laughed, agreeingly.
"Of course," he said, "we're all right." Then he began looking around
for food.
He found in one corner a bushel of potatoes and hanging beside a bunk of
shelves where the cook had kept his dishes, there was a good part of a
dried deer's ham. Standing on a chair he peered over the top of the
shelves. There was nothing there.
"We shall have to live on dried venison and potatoes," he said. "They
seem to have left most of their stuff on top here," and the lady was
content.
"We'll have venison in all sorts of ways," she commented. "Here's some
salt," and she held up a little bag she had found on the floor.
They supped on what they had brought and slept in the bunk which with
its belongings, had been abandoned by one of Felton's friends. There
passed a couple of blithesome days--to the woman--while Felton, brave
liar, smiled and made fires, and puns and love, and was sick at heart
and full of an inflammatory vocabulary in his inmost being. The miners
had probably not yet half way floundered through the snow lying between
them and a more or less green old valley. Without aid from the outside
Felton knew that he and his wife must die.
The snow fell quietly, steadily, remorselessly. When the two should be
missed on the arrival of the miners at the settlement, it was more than
likely that the mountains would be inaccessible until spring.
Felton found an axe and kept himself from desperation by digging out
certain trees in a wind blown clear space one side of the cabin. The
small trees he converted into firewood, passing the sticks through the
window to Kate, who delightedly piled the fuel up in great stacks by the
chimney. It was not very cold, and they congratulated themselves upon
their store of wood, which was carefully husbanded, for future
contingencies.
On the fourth day it ceased snowing and they could see the world. It was
all white. The snow was about five feet on a level around the house. The
canyon down which the home trail ran was evenly filled with feathery
powdered snow. It grew colder. Felton at last told the truth to
Catherine.
"Dear, I have been lying to you frightfully. There has been no food on
the top of the big shelf. We have enough to live on for four or five
days, at the utmost. Then we must starve. We are supposed by our friends
to be safe, and we cannot reach the outside world. It would take weeks
for the most determined men to reach us--from Sharon even, the nearest
settlement."
Any man should be satisfied with what this woman did then. She said:
"Dear, the only reproach I have is that you did not tell me the true
situation at first. Then we could have suffered together, and that would
have been better. As it is I think I realize all the situation now. We
are together and we have been very happy anyhow."
This altogether illogical conclusion of her words somehow strengthened
Felton wonderfully. He began fumbling round the room. Courage filled his
heart, without reason, he felt, but with courage regained he was not
inclined to quibble as to its source.
"I don't know," he said, "somehow, my girl, you've given me hope. I'll
bet the good God will help us."
"Course He will," responded this dignified, blessed young matron born
and bred in Boston.
"Come," said Catherine, rousing herself from the thoughtful mood which
had gripped her, after the first excitement of Felton's revelation was
over. "We haven't half explored this place. Who knows but there's a
barrel of flour stowed away in some dark corner."
"Behind this door--for example," said Felton, entering into his wife's
mood, and glad for any little diversion to check thought and
imagination.
There had been standing against the wall in one dark corner of the room
an old door, evidently brought in from some outhouse for the repairing
of its hinges. It had not been disturbed since the new occupancy of the
place. Felton grasped the pineplanks in both hands and set them to one
side. There semi-gleaming in the candlelight hung revealed one of the
two business ends of the common place and eminently valuable telephone
of North America.
Felton gasped and then sat down backwards on the floor. "Holy smoke,"
was all he said.
Catherine came running to the half dazed man but for a little time he
said nothing. He was thinking. He remembered suddenly that there was a
telephone between the mine and the nearest town in the valley, that to
which the miners had fled. Of course the line was deep beneath the snow,
part of the way, but it might be working. He looked at his wife in a
dazed way, clambered to his feet and took hold of the receiver.
"Don't be disappointed," said Catherine, "if it doesn't work. We shall
be saved somehow."
"Hello!" shouted Felton, into the familiar, waiting 'phone.
The dazed wife stood by in the silence which ensued, saying nothing.
Moment after moment passed and there came no answer. Still the man stood
there repeating at intervals of four or five minutes the hopeless word,
the call "Hello". Suddenly he upreared himself, laughed somewhat wildly,
and applied his lips to the transmitter.
"Hello! Who is this?" came the query from Sharon.
"I am Robert Felton. Tell Jim Worthy or George Long that we are snowed
in at Parsons, without provisions for more than a few days, and tell
them to come in a hurry--the trail is from five to twenty feet deep in
snow."
"Who do you mean by we--all of the Parson's crowd?"
Then another question was put.
"My wife is with me--we are alone--the Parson's outfit left the night
the storm began."
"All right. Keep a stiff upper lip. There'll be help coming," called the
operator, and the bell rung ending the conversation.
Felton could not speak. He sat dumbly waiting, while Catherine chattered
to him of commonplace things to win him back to his ordinary frame of
mind.
Soon the telephone bell rang again, and this time friendly, well known
voices gave messages of hope and good cheer. It was rumored that the men
from Parson's camp were on the way--but so far they had not arrived. Men
and horses amply supplied with tools, with provisions, with everything
needful, would leave the valley at once for the work of rescue.
"But how long can you hold out?" at last broke in one of the heartsome,
friendly voices.
"It may take us ten or even twenty days to shovel through to you--can
you stand such a siege?"
"We'll do our best," returned Felton, over the wire, "but the truth is,
we are pretty short of food, so take no chances."
They were already living on carefully measured out rations and Felton
resolved to reduce his own portion below the meagre amount he had
already given himself.
"Keep up heart, we'll help you--Good-bye!" So ended this talk with
Worthy and Long.
The days dragged. The wood chopping, the fire keeping, the story
telling, to beguile the weary hours, went on. Once or twice a day came a
message of good hope from Sharon. The rescuers were off, and in the
shortest time possible would reach the beleagured couple.
One morning there came a sharp, insistent ringing of the bell which
opened the door of the world to these two who were making their one
daily meal from scraps of dried meat, and almost the very last of the
treasured rations were in their hands at the moment.
"Hello!" called Felton at the 'phone in a moment.
"Hello! That you Felton?"
"Yes. This isn't Tom, is it?"
"Yes--of course, Tom, just in from Parson's--been hearing about you. We
left in a hurry--mighty lucky or you wouldn't have had the telephone
connected and ready for business."
It was one of the men from Parson's camp.
"They've reached Sharon!" said Felton to Catherine.
"Say!" came Tom's voice over the wire, "You've found the stores, haven't
you?"
"What stores?" replied Felton--"We found a little dried venison, and
some potatoes in the cupboard, but they are all gone."
"Darn a tenderfoot anyway!" shouted Tom--then recollecting himself he
went on. "Take up a board there over by the table. Where do you expect
to find provisions if not in the cellar?" Then he muttered to himself.
"They're in luck. It's just a providence! We thought of packing that
grub down with us."
Down went the hand of Felton, and away he sprung to the square pine
table near the door. Taking up a loose board he gazed exantantly into
what Tom called the cellar, a square hole under the floor, filled with
boxes and kegs and tin cans of meat and vegetables and biscuits.
"Catherine!" he called, but Catherine was already there, kneeling by
him, her arms around his neck. She was crying, the brave girl, and
Felton was conscious of a sneaking desire to follow her example.
"But won't we feast?" at last Catherine spoke. And then she ran to the
telephone to send her own special message to Tom, and to the whole
Parsons outfit, and it is certain that there never went over the wires a
more grateful and gracious thankfulness than was expressed by Catherine
and Felton upon this occasion.
And so, with renewed life, the two awaited events, and one day, toward
noon, they heard through the stillness a faint sound, a sort of metallic
clink, and a little later they were sure of the welcome ring of men's
voices. Felton fired off the loaded rifle which hung over the cabin door
at Parson's and soon came an answering volley of pistol shots and a
faintly heard muffled "hurrah."
Felton seized his own snow shovel, and began madly working through the
drifts in front of the door. His efforts looked puny in the waste of
snow, but it was a relief to his nerves to be active, and soon Catherine
joined him, laughing and royally flourishing the Parsons broom.
It was two hours before the rescuing army of miners and cowboys reached
the little lane which Felton and Catherine had cut out and swept for
them--scarce ten yards it reached from the doorway. And then, well, then
it was but a few days back to the world--that world which had been saved
to Felton and his wife by the life line, the wire stretched across and
through the snow between mountains and men.