The White Desert
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Courtney Ryley Cooper >> The White Desert
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"Why? Simply because I figured they would make the best witnesses."
"It couldn't have been," and Houston's voice was more coldly caustic
than ever, "that it was because they would be willing to perjure
themselves, while the real doctors wouldn't?"
"Of course not! This whole thing is silly. Besides, I'm out of it
entirely. I'm--"
"Mr. Worthington," and Houston's tone changed. "Your manner and your
words indicate very plainly that you're not out of it--that you merely
wish you were. Isn't that the truth? Don't you?"
"Well," and the man lit a fresh cigarette, "I feel that way about every
murder case."
"But especially about this one. You're not naturally a persecutor.
You don't naturally want to railroad men to the penitentiary. And I
believe that, as a general thing, you didn't do it. You tried it in my
case; election was coming on, you had just run up against two or three
acquittals, and you had made up your mind that in my case you were
going to run the gauntlet to get a conviction. I don't believe you
wanted to send me up simply for the joy of seeing an innocent man
confined in prison. You wanted a conviction--wasn't that it?"
"Every prosecutor works for that."
"Not when he knows the man is innocent, Mr. Worthington. You knew
that--I have proof. I have evidence that you found it out almost at
the beginning of my trial--August second, to be exact--and that you
used this information to your own ends. In other words, it told you
what the defense would testify; and you built up, with your
professional experts, a wall to combat it. Now, isn't that the truth?"
"Why--" The former district attorney took more time than usual to
knock the ashes from his cigarette, then suddenly changed the subject.
"You spoke of a suit you might bring when you came in here?"
"Yes. Against the city. I have a perfect one. I was persecuted when
the official in charge of the case knew that I was not guilty. To that
end I can call the three doctors I've mentioned and put them on the
stand and ask them why they did not testify in the case. I also can
call the officials of Bellstrand Hospital in New York where you
conducted certain experiments on cadavers on the night of August
second; also a doctor who saw you working in there and who watched you
personally strike the blows with a mallet; further, I can produce the
records of the hospital which state that you were there, give the names
of the entire party, together with the number of corpses experimented
upon. Is that sufficient evidence that I know what I'm talking about?"
Worthington examined his cigarette again.
"I suppose it's on the books down there. But there's nothing to state
of what the experiments consisted."
"I have just told you that I have an eye-witness. Further, there are
the three doctors."
"Have you seen them?"
Houston thought quickly. It was his only chance.
"I know exactly what their testimony will be."
"You've made arrangements for your suit then." Worthington's color had
changed. Houston noticed that the hand which held the cigarette
trembled slightly.
"No, I haven't. I'm not here to browbeat you, Mr. Worthington, or lie
to you. It came to me simply as a ruse to get in to see you. But the
more I think of it, the more I know that I could go through with it and
possibly win it. I might get my million. I might not. I don't want
money gained in that way. The taxpayers would have to foot the bill,
not yourself."
"Oh, I guess I'd pay enough," Worthington had assumed an entirely
different attitude now. "It would hurt me worse in business than it
would if I were still in office. Whether it's true or not."
"You know in your heart that there's no doubt of that."
Worthington did not answer. Houston waited a moment, then went on.
"But personally, I don't want to file the suit. I don't want any
money--that way. I don't want any bribes, or exculpations, or
statements from you that you know me to be innocent. Some might
believe it; others would only ask how much I paid to have that
statement given out. The damage has been done and is next to
irreparable. You could have cleared me easily enough by dropping the
case, or making your investigations before ever an indictment was
issued. You didn't, and I remain guilty in the minds of most of
Boston, in spite of what the jury said. A man is not guilty until
convicted--under the law. He is guilty as soon as accused, with the
lay mind. So you can't help me much there; my only chance for freedom
lies in finding the man who actually committed that murder. But that's
something else. We won't talk about it. You owe me something. And
I'm here to-night to ask you for it."
"I thought you said you didn't want any bribes."
"I don't. May I ask you what your margin of profit is at your
machinery company?"
"My margin of profit? What's that? Well, I suppose it runs around
twelve per cent."
"Then will you please allow me to give you twelve thousand dollars in
profits? I'm in the lumber business. I have a contract that runs into
the millions; surely that is good enough security to a man"--he
couldn't resist the temptation--"who knows my absolute innocence. It
isn't good enough for the bankers, who still believe me guilty, so I've
come directly to you. I need one hundred thousand dollars' worth of
lumber-mill machinery, blade saws, crosscuts, jackers, planers,
kickers, chain belting, leather belting, and everything else that goes
to make up a first-class plant. I can pay for it--in installments. I
guarantee to give you every cent above my current running expenses
until the bill is disposed of. My contract with the Mountain, Plains
and Salt Lake Railroad is my bond. I don't even ask a discount, or for
you to lose any of your profits. I don't even ask any public statement
by you regarding my innocence. All I want is to have you do what you
would do to any reputable business man who came to you with a contract
running into the millions of dollars--to give me credit for that
machinery. It's a fair proposition. Come in with me on it, and we'll
forget the rest. Stay out--and I fight!"
For a long moment, Kilbane Worthington paced the floor, his hands
clasped behind him, his rather thin head low upon his chest. Then, at
last, he looked up.
"How long are you going to be in town?"
"Until this matter's settled."
"Where are you staying?"
"The Touraine."
"Very well. I'll have a machine there to pick you up at ten o'clock
to-morrow morning and take you to my office. In the meanwhile--I'll
think it over."
CHAPTER XVIII
It was a grinning Barry Houston who leaped from the train at Tabernacle
a week later and ran open-armed through the snow toward the waiting
Ba'tiste.
"You got my telegram?" He asked it almost breathlessly.
"Ah, _oui! oui, oui, oui_! _Sacre_, and you are the wizard!"
"Hardly that." They were climbing into the bobsled. "I just had
enough sense to put two and two together. On the train to Boston I got
a tip about my case, something that led me to believe that the district
attorney knew all the time that I was innocent. He had conducted
experiments at the Bellstrand Hospital of which nothing had been said
in the trial. Three famous doctors had been with him. As soon as I
saw their names, I instinctively knew that if the experiments had
turned out the way the district attorney had wanted them, he would have
used them in the trial against me, but that their silence meant the
testimony was favorable to me."
"_Bon_!" Ba'tiste grinned happily. "And he?"
"It just happened that he is now in the mill machinery business. I,"
and Houston smiled with the memory of his victory, "I convinced him
that he should give me credit."
"Eet is good. In the woods, there are many men. The log, he is pile
all about the mill. Three thousand tie, already they are stack up."
"And the woman--she has caused no trouble?"
"No. Peuff! I have no see her. Mebbe so, eet was a mistake."
"Maybe, Ba'tiste, but I was sure I recognized her. The Blackburn crowd
hasn't given up the ghost yet?"
"Ah, no. But eet will. Still they think that we cannot fill the
contract. They think that after the first shipment or so, then we will
have to quit."
"They may be right, Ba'tiste. It would require nearly two thousand men
to keep that mill supplied with logs, once we get into production,
outside of the regular mill force, under conditions such as they are
now. It would be ruinous. We've got to find some other way, Ba'tiste,
of getting our product to the mill. That's all there is to it."
"Ba'teese, he have think of a way--that he have keep secret. Ba'teese,
he have a, what-you-say, hump."
"Hunch, you mean?"
"Ah, _oui_. Eet is this. We will not bring the log to the mill. We
will bring the mill to the log. We have to build the new plant, yes,
_oui_? Then, _bon_, we shall build eet in the forest, where there is
the lumber."
"Quite so. And then who will build a railroad switch that can
negotiate the hills to the mill?"
"Ah!" Ba'tiste clapped a hand to his forehead. "_Veritas_? I am the
prize, what-you-say, squash! Ba'teese, he never think of eet!" A
moment he sat glum, only to surge with another idea. "But, now,
Ba'teese have eet! He shall go to Medaine! He shall tell her to write
to the district attorney of Boston--that he will tell her--"
"It was part of my agreement, Ba'tiste, that he be forced to make no
statements regarding my innocence."
"Ah, but--"
"It was either that, or lose the machinery. He's in business. He's
afraid of notoriety. The plain, cold truth is that he tried to
railroad me, and only my knowledge of that fact led him into doing a
decent and honorable thing. But I sealed any chance of his moral aid
when I made my bargain. It was my only chance."
Slowly Ba'tiste nodded and slapped the reins on the back of the horse.
"Ba'teese will not see Medaine," came at last, and they went on.
Again the waiting game, but a busy game however, one which kept the ice
roads polished and slippery; which resulted, day by day, in a
constantly growing mountain of logs about the diminutive sawmill. One
in which plans were drawn, and shell-like buildings of mere slats and
slab sidings erected, while heavy, stone foundations were laid in the
firm, rocky soil to support the machinery, when it arrived. A game in
which Houston hurried from the forests to the mill and back again, now
riding the log sheds as a matter of swifter locomotion, instead of for
the thrill, as he once had done. Another month went by, to bring with
it the bill of lading which told that the saws, the beltings, the
planers and edgers and trimmers, and the half hundred other items of
machinery were at last on their way, a month of activities and--of
hopes.
For to Ba'tiste Renaud and Barry Houston there yet remained one faint
chance. The Blackburn crowd had taken on a gamble, one which, at the
time, had seemed safe enough; the investment of thousands of dollars
for a plant which they had believed firmly would be free of
competition. That plant could not hope for sufficient business to keep
it alive, with the railroad contract gone, and the bigger mill of
Houston and Renaud in successful operation. There would come the time
when they must forfeit that lease and contract through non-payment, or
agree to re-lease them to the original owner. But would that time
arrive soon enough? It was a grim possibility,--a gambling wager that
held forth hope, and at the same time threatened them with extinction.
For the same thing applied to Houston and Ba'tiste that applied to
Blackburn and Thayer. If they could not make good on their contract,
the other mill was ever ready to step in.
"Eet all depen'," said Ba'tiste more than once during the snowy,
frost-caked days in which they watched every freight train that pulled,
white-coated, over the range into Tabernacle. "Eet all depen' on the
future. Mebbe so, we make eet. Mebbe so, we do not. But we gamble,
eh, _mon_ Baree?"
"With our last cent," came the answer of the other man, and in the
voice was grimness and enthusiasm. It was a game of life or extinction
now.
March, and a few warm days, which melted the snows only that they might
crust again. Back and forth traveled the bobsled to Tabernacle, only
to meet with disappointment.
"I've wired the agent at Denver three times about that stuff," came the
announcement of the combined telegrapher and general supervisor of
freight at the little station. "He's told me that he'd let me know as
soon as it got in. But nothing's come yet."
A week more, and another week after that, in which spring taunted the
hills, causing the streams to run bank-full with the melting waters of
the snow, in which a lone robin made his appearance about the
camp,--only to fade as quickly as he had come. For winter, tenacious,
grim, hateful winter, had returned for a last fling, a final outburst
of frigid viciousness that was destined to wrap the whole range country
in a grip of terror.
They tried the bobsled, Ba'tiste and Houston, only to give it up. All
night had the snow fallen, in a thick, curtain-like shield which
blotted out even the silhouettes of the heaviest pines at the brow of
the hill, which piled high upon the ridges, and with great sweeps of
the wind drifted every cut of the road to almost unfathomable depths.
The horses floundered and plowed about in vain efforts at locomotion,
at last to plunge in the terror of a bottomless road. They whinnied
and snorted, as though in appeal to the men on the sled behind,--a sled
that worked on its runners no longer, but that sunk with every fresh
drift to the main-boards themselves. Wadded with clothing, shouting in
a mixture of French and English and his own peculiar form of slang,
Ba'tiste tried in vain to force the laboring animals onward. But they
only churned uselessly in the drift; their hoofs could find no footing,
save the yielding masses of snow. Puffing, as though the exertion had
been his own, the trapper turned and stared down at his companion.
"Eet is no use," came finally. "The horse, he can not pull. We must
make the trip on the snowshoe."
They turned back for the bunk house, to emerge a few moments
later,--bent, padded forms, fighting clumsily against the sweep of the
storm. Ghosts they became almost immediately, snow-covered things that
hardly could be discerned a few feet away, one hand of each holding
tight to the stout cord which led from waist-belt to waist-belt, their
only insurance against being parted from each other in the blinding
swirl of winter.
Hours, stopping at short intervals to seek for some landmark--for the
road long ago had become obliterated--at last to see faintly before
them the little box-car station house, and to hurry toward it in a fear
that neither of them dared to express to the other. Snow in the
mountains is not a gentle thing, nor one that comes by fits and gusts.
The blizzard does not sweep away its vengeful enthusiasm in a day or a
night. It comes and it stays--departing for a time, it seems--that it
may gather new strength and fury for an even fiercer attack. And the
features of the agent, as he stared up from the rattling telegraph key,
were not conducive to relief.
"Your stuff's on the way, if that's any news to you," came with a
worried laugh. "It left Denver on Number 312 at five o'clock this
morning behind Number Eight. That's no sign that it's going to get
here. Eight isn't past Tollifer yet."
"Not past Tollifer?" Houston stared anxiously. "Why, it should be at
the top of the range by now. It hasn't even begun to climb."
"Good reason. They're getting this over there too."
"The snow?"
"Worse than here, if anything. Denver reported ten inches at eleven
o'clock--and it's fifteen miles from the range. There was three inches
when the train started. Lord knows where that freight is--I can't get
any word from it."
"But--"
"Gone out again!" The telegrapher hammered disgustedly on the key.
"The darned line grounds on me about every five minutes. I--"
"Do you hear anything from Crestline--about conditions up there?"
"Bad. It's even drifting in the snowsheds. They've got two plows
working in 'em keeping 'em open, and another down at Crystal Lake. If
things let up, they're all right. If not--they'll run out of coal by
to-morrow morning and be worse than useless. There's only about a
hundred tons at Crestline--and it takes fuel to feed them babies. But
so far--"
"Yes?"
"They're keeping things halfway open. Wait a minute--" he bent over
the key again--"it's opened up. Number Eight's left Tollifer. The
freight's behind it, and three more following that. I guess they're
going to try to run them through in a bunch. They'll be all right--if
they can only get past Crestline. But if they don't--"
He rattled and banged at the key for a long moment, cursing softly.
Only the dead "cluck" of a grounded line answered him. Houston turned
to Ba'tiste.
"It looks bad."
"_Oui_! But eet depen'--on the storm. Eet come this way, near' ev'
spring. Las' year the road tie up--and the year before. Oh," he
shrugged his shoulders, "that is what one get for living in a country
where the railroad eet chase eetself all over the mountain before eet
get here."
"There wouldn't be any chance at the tunnel either, would there? They
haven't cut through yet."
"No--and they won' finish until June. That is when they figure--"
"That's a long way off."
"Too long," agreed Ba'tiste, and turned again toward the telegrapher,
once more alert over a speaking key. But before it could carry
anything but a fragmentary message, life was gone again, and the
operator turned to the snow-caked window, with its dreary exterior of
whirling snow that seemed to come ever faster.
"Things are going to get bad in this country if this keeps up," came at
last. "There ain't any too great a stock of food."
"How about hay for the cattle?"
"All right. I guess. If the ranchers can get to it. But that's the
trouble about this snow. It ain't like the usual spring blizzard.
It's dry as a January fall, and it's sure drifting. Keeps up for four
or five days; they'll be lucky to find the haystacks."
For a long time then, the three stood looking out the window,
striving--merely for the sake of passing time--to identify the almost
hidden buildings of the little town, scarcely more than a hundred yards
away. At last the wire opened again, and the operator went once more
to his desk. Ba'tiste and Houston waited for him to give some report.
But there was none. At last:
"What is it?" Houston was at his side. The operator looked up.
"Denver asking Marionville if it can put its snowplow through and try
to buck the drifts from this side. No answer yet."
A long wait. Then:
"Well, that's done. Only got one Mallett engine at Marionville. Other
two are in the shop. One engine couldn't--"
He stopped. He bent over the key. His face went white--tense.
"God!"
"What's wrong?" The two men were close beside him now.
"Number one-eleven's kicked over the hill!"
"One-eleven--kicked over?"
"Yes. Snowplow. They're wiring Denver, from Crestline. The second
plow's up there in the snowshed with the crew. One of 'em's dead. The
other's--wait a minute, I have to piece it together."
A silence, except for the rattling of the key, broken, jagged, a
clattering voice of the distance, faint in the roar and whine of the
storm, yet penetrating as it carried the news of a far-away world,--a
world where the three waiting men knew that all had turned to a white
hell of wintry fury; where the grim, forbidding mountains were now the
abiding place of the snow-ledge and the avalanche; where even steel and
the highest product of invention counted for nothing against the blast
of the wind and the swirl of the tempest. Then finally, as from far
away, a strained voice came, the operator's:
"Ice had gotten packed on the rails already. One-eleven tried to keep
on without a pick and shovel gang. Got derailed on a curve just below
Crestline and went over. One-twelve's crew got the men up. The plow's
smashed to nothing. Fifty-three thousand dollars' worth of junk now.
Wait a minute--here's Denver."
Again one of those agonizing waits, racking to the two men whose future
depended largely upon the happenings atop the range. Far on the other
side, fighting slowly upward, was a freight train containing flatcar
after flatcar loaded with the necessary materials of a large sawmill.
True, June was yet two months away. But months are short when there is
work to do, when machinery must be installed, and when contracts are
waiting. Every day, every hour, every minute counted now. And as if
in answer to their thoughts, the operator straightened, with a little
gesture of hopelessness.
"Guess it's all off," came at last. "The general superintendent in
Denver's on the wire. Says to back up everything to Tollifer,
including the plows, and give up the ghost."
"Give it up?" Houston stared blankly at the telegrapher. "But that's
not railroading!"
"It is when you're with a concern that's all but broke," answered the
operator. "It's cheaper for this old wooden-axle outfit to quit than
to go on fighting--"
"That mean six weeks eef this storm keep up two days longer!" Ba'tiste
broke in excitedly. "By to-morrow morning, ever' snowshed, he will be
bank-full of snow. The track, he will be four inches in ice. Six
week--this country, he can not stand it! Tell him so on the telegraph!
Tell him the cattle, he will starve! Peuff! No longer do I think of
our machinery! Eef it is los'--we are los'. But let eet go. Say to
heem nothing of that. Say to heem that there are the cattle that will
starve, that in the stores there is not enough provision. That--"
"I know. I'll call Denver. But I don't know what chance there is--the
road's been waiting for a chance to go into bankruptcy, anyway--since
this new Carrow Point deal is about through. They haven't got any
money--you know that, Ba'tiste. It's cheaper for them to shut down for
six weeks than to try to keep running. That fifty thousand they lost
on that snowplow just about put the crimp in 'em. It might cost a
couple of hundred thousand more to keep the road open. What's the
result? It's easier to quit. But I'll try 'em--"
He turned to the key and hammered doggedly. Only soggy deadness
answered. He tested his plugs and tried again. In vain. An hour
later, he still was there, fighting for the impossible, striving to
gain an answer from vacancy, struggling to instil life into a thing
deadened by ice, and drifts, and wind, and broken, sagging telegraph
poles. The line was gone!
CHAPTER XIX
Until dusk they remained in the boxlike station, hoping against hope.
But the whine and snarl of the wind were the only sounds that came to
them, the steady banking of the snow against the windows the only
evidence of life. The telegraph line, somewhere between Tabernacle and
the country which lay over the bleak, now deadly range, was a shattered
thing, with poles buried in drifts, with loose strands of wire swinging
in the gusts of the blizzard, with ice coated upon the insulations, and
repair--until the sun should come and the snows melt--an almost
impossible task.
"It'd take a guy with a diving suit to find some of them wires, I
guess," the operator hazarded, as he finally ceased his efforts and
reached for his coat and hat and snowshoes. "There ain't no use
staying here. You fellows are going to sleep in town to-night, ain't
you?"
There was little else to do. They fought their way to the rambling
boarding house, there to join the loafing group in what passed for a
lobby and to watch with them the lingering death of day in a shroud of
white. Night brought no cessation of the wind, no lessening of the
banks of snow which now were drifting high against the first-story
windows; the door was only kept in working order through constant
sallies of the bent old boarding-house keeper, with his snow shovel.
Windows banged and rattled, with a muffled, eerie sound; snow sifted
through the tiniest cracks, spraying upon those who sat near them. The
old cannon-ball stove, crammed with coal, reached the point where dull
red spots enlivened its bulging belly; yet the big room was cold with
non-detectable drafts, the men shivered in spite of their heavy
clothing, and the region outside the immediate radius of the heater was
barn-like with frigidity. Midnight came, and the group about the stove
slept in their chairs, rather than undergo the discomfort and coldness
of bed.
Morning brought no relief. The storm was worse, if anything, and the
boarding-house keeper faced drifts waist high at the doorway with his
first shoveling expedition of the day. The telegrapher, at the
frost-caked window, rubbed a spot with his hand and stared into the
dimness of the flying snow, toward his station.
"Guess I'll have t' call for volunteers if I get in there to-day.
We'll have to tunnel."
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