The White Desert

C >> Courtney Ryley Cooper >> The White Desert

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Ba'tiste and Houston joined him. The box car that served as a station
house--always an object of the heaviest drifts--was buried! The big
French-Canadian pulled at his beard.

"Peuff! Eet is like the ground hog," he announced. "Eet is
underground already."

"Yeh. But I've got to get in there. The wire might be working."

"So? We will help, Baree and Ba'teese. Come--we get the shovels."

Even that was work. The town simply had ceased to be; the stores were
closed, solitude was everywhere. They forced a window and climbed into
the little general merchandise establishment, simply because it was
easier than striving to get in through the door. Then, armed with
their shovels, they began the work of tunneling to the station. Two
hours later, the agent once more at his dead key, Ba'tiste turned to
Houston.

"Eet is the no use here," he announced. "We must get to camp and
assemble the men that are strong and willing to help. Then--"

"Yes?"

"Then, eet will be the battle to help those who are not fortunate.
There is death in this storm."

Again with their waist-belt guide lines, they started forth, to bend
against the storm in a struggle that was to last for hours; to lose
their trail, to find it again, through the straggling poles that in the
old days had carried telephone wires, and at last to reach the squat,
snowed-in buildings of camp. There, Ba'tiste assembled the workmen in
the bunk house.

"There are greater things than this now," he announced. "We want the
strong men--who will go back with us to Tabernacle, and who will be
willing to take the risk to help the countryside. Ah, _oui_, eet is
the danger that is ahead. How many of you will go?"

One after another they readied for their snowshoes, silent men who
acted, rather than spoke. A few were left behind, to care for the camp
in case of emergencies, to keep the roofs as free from snow as possible
and to avoid cave-ins. The rest filed outside, one by one, awkwardly
testing the bindings of their snowshoes, and awaiting the command. At
the doorway, Ba'tiste, his big hands fumbling, caught the paws of
Golemar, his wolf-dog, and raised the great, shaggy creature against
his breast.

"No," he said in kindly, indulgent fashion. "Eet is not for Golemar to
go with us. The drift, they are deep. There is no crust on the snow.
Golemar, he would sink above his head. Then blooey! There would be no
Golemar!"

Guide lines were affixed. Once more, huddled, clumsy figures of white,
one following the other, they made the gruelling trip back to
Tabernacle and the duties which they knew lay before them. For already
the reports were beginning to come in, brought by storm-weakened,
blizzard-battered men, of houses where the roofs had crashed beneath
the weight of snow, of lost ranchmen, of bawling cattle, drifting
before the storm,--to death. It was the beginning of a two-weeks'
siege of a white inferno.

Little time did Barry Houston have for thought in those weeks. There
were too many other things to crowd upon him; too many cold, horrible
hours in blinding snow, or in the faint glare of a ruddy sun which only
broke through the clouds that it might jeer at the stricken country
beneath it, then fade again in the whipping gusts of wind and its
attendant clouds, giving way once more to the surging sweep of white
and the howl of a freshened blizzard.

Telegraph poles reared only their cross-arms above the mammoth drifts.
Haystacks became buried, lost things. The trees of the forest,
literally harnessed with snow, dropped their branches like tired arms
too weary to longer bear their burdens. The whole world, it seemed,
was one great, bleak thing of dreary white,--a desert in which there
was life only that there might be death, where the battle for existence
continued only as a matter of instinct.

And through--or rather over--this bleak desert went the men of the West
Country, silent, frost-burned men, their lips cracked from the cut of
wind, their eyes blood-red with inflammation, struggling here and there
with a pack of food upon their back that they might reach some desolate
home where there were women and children; or stopping to pull and tug
at a snow-trapped steer and by main effort, drag him into a barren spot
where the sweep of the gale had kept the ground fairly clear of snow;
at times also, they halted to dig into a haystack, and through long
hours scattered the welcome food about for the bawling cattle; or
gathered wood, where such a thing was possible, and lighting great
fires, left them, that they might melt the snows about a spot near a
supply of feed, where the famished cattle could gather and await the
next trip of the rescuers, bearing them sustenance.

Oftimes they stopped in vain--the beast which they sought to succor was
beyond aid--and a revolver shot sounded, muffled in the thickness of
the storm. Then, with knives and axes, the attack came, and struggling
forms bore to a ranch house the smoking portions of a newly butchered
beef; food at least for one family until the relief of sun and warmth
would come. It was a never-ending agony of long hours and
muscle-straining work. But the men who partook--were men.

And side by side with the others, with giant Ba'tiste, with the silent
woodsmen, with the angular, wiry ranchmen, was Barry Houston. His
muscles ached. His head was ablaze with the eye-strain of constant
white; his body numbed with cold from the time that he left the old
cannon-ball stove of the boarding house in the early morning until he
returned to it at night. Long ago had he lost hope,--so far as
personal aims and desires were concerned. The Crestline road was tied
up; it had quit completely; Barry Houston knew that the fury of the
storm in this basin country below the hills was as nothing compared to
the terror of those crag tops where altitude added to the frigidity,
and where from mountain peak to mountain peak the blizzard leaped with
ever-increasing ferocity. Far out on the level stretches leading up to
the plains of Wyoming, other men were working, struggling doggedly from
telegraph pole to telegraph pole, in an effort to repair the lines so
that connection might be made to Rawlins, and thence to Cheyenne and
Denver,--to apprise the world that a great section of the country had
been cut off from aid, that women and children were suffering from lack
of food, that every day brought the news of a black splotch in the
snow,--the form of a man, arms outstretched, face buried in the drift,
who had fought and lost. But so far, there had been only failure. It
was a struggle that made men grim and dogged; Barry Houston no less
than the rest. He had ceased to think of the simpler things of life,
of the ordinary problems, the usual worries or likes and dislikes. His
path led once by the home of Medaine Robinette, and he clambered toward
the little house with little more of feeling than of approaching that
of the most unfamiliar ranchman.

Smoke was coming from the chimney. There were the marks of snowshoes.
But they might mean nothing in the battle for existence. Houston
scrambled up to the veranda and banged on the door. A moment more, and
he faced Medaine Robinette.

"Just wanted to see if you're all right," came almost curtly.

"Yes--thank you."

"Need any food?"

"I have plenty."

"Anybody sick?"

"No. Lost Wing has found wood. We're keeping warm. Tell me--" and
there was the politeness of emergency in her tones--"is there any need
for women in Tabernacle? I am willing to go if--"

"Not yet. Besides, a woman couldn't get in there alone."

"I could. I'm strong enough. Besides, I've been out--I went to the
Hurd Ranch yesterday. Mrs. Hurd's sick--Lost Wing brought me the word."

"Then keep on with that. There's nothing in Tabernacle--and no place
for any one who isn't destitute. Stay here. Have you food enough for
Hurd's?"

"Yes. That is--"

"I'll leave my pack. Take that over as you need it. There's enough
for a week there. If things don't let up by that time, I'll be by
again."

"Thank you."

Then the door was closed, and Houston went his way again, back to
Tabernacle and a fresh supply for his pack--hardly realizing the fact
that he had talked to the woman he could not help wishing for--the
woman he would have liked to have loved. The world was almost too
gray, too grim, too horrible for Houston even to remember that there
was an estrangement between them. Dully, his intellect numbed as his
body was numbed, he went back to his tasks,--tasks that were seemingly
endless.

Day after day, the struggle remained the same, the wind, the snow, the
drifts, the white fleece flying on the breast of the gale even when
there were no storm clouds above, blotting out the light of the sun and
causing the great ball to be only a red, ugly, menacing thing in a
field of dismal gray. Night after night the drifts swept, changing,
deepening in spots where the ground had been clear before, smoothing
over the hummocks, weaving across the country like the vagaries of
shifting sands before they finally packed into hard, compressed mounds,
to form bulwarks for newer drifts when the next storm came. Day after
day,--and then quiet, for forty-eight hours.

It caused men to shout,--men who had cursed the sun in the blazing
noonday hours of summer, but men who now extended their arms to it, who
slapped one another on the back, who watched the snow with blood-red
eyes for the first sign of a melting particle, and who became
hysterically jubilant when they saw it. Forty-eight hours! Deeper and
deeper went the imprints of milder weather upon the high-piled
serrations of white, at last to cease. The sun had faded on the
afternoon of the second day. The thaw stopped. The snowshoes soon
carried a new crunching sound that gradually became softer, more
muffled. For the clouds had come again, the wind had risen with a
fiercer bite than ever in it; again the snow was falling. But the grim
little army of rescuers, plodding from one ranchhouse to another, had
less of worriment in their features now,--even though the situation was
no less tense, no less dangerous. At least the meager stores of the
small merchandise establishment in Tabernacle could be distributed with
more ease; a two-inch crust of snow had formed over the main snowfall,
permitting small sleds to be pulled behind struggling men; the world
beneath had been frozen in, to give place to a new one above. And with
that:

"It's open! It's open!" The shout came from the lips of the
telegrapher, waving his arms as he ran from the tunnel that led to the
stationhouse. "It's open! I've had Rawlins on the wire!"

Men crowded about him and thumped into the little box car to listen,
like children, to the rattling of the telegraph key,--as though they
never had heard one before. So soon does civilization feel the need of
its inventions, once they are taken away; so soon does the mind become
primitive, once the rest of the world has been shut away from it.
Eagerly they clustered there, staring with anxious eyes toward the
operator as he hammered at the key, talking in whispers lest they
disturb him, waiting for his interpretation of the message, like
worshippers waiting for the word of an oracle.

"I'm putting it all on the wire!" he announced at last, with feverish
intensity. "I'm telling 'em just how it is over here. Maybe they can
do something--from Rawlins."

"Rawlins?" Houston had edged forward. "There's not a chance. It's
hundreds of miles away; they can't use horses, and they certainly can't
walk. Wait--will you give me a chance at something?"

A gleam had come into his eyes. His hands twisted nervously. Voices
mumbled about him; suddenly the great hands of Ba'tiste grasped him by
the shoulders and literally tossed him toward the telegrapher.

"Ah, _oui_! If eet is the idea--then speak it."

"Go on--" the telegrapher had stopped his key for a moment--"I'll put
it through, if it'll help."

"All right. Get Denver on the wire. Then take this message to every
newspaper in the city:

"'Can't you help us? Please try to start campaign to force Crestline
Road to open the Pass. Women and children are starving here. We have
been cut off from the rest of the world for two weeks. We need
food--and coal. Road will not be open for four or five weeks more
under ordinary circumstances. This will mean death to many of us here,
the wiping out of a great timber and agricultural country, and a blot
on the history of Colorado. Help us--and we will not forget it."

"'THE CITIZENS OF THE WEST COUNTRY.'"

"Ah, _oui_!" Old Ba'tiste was addressing the rest of the crowd. "The
newspapers, they can help, better than any one else. Eet is our
chance. _Bon_--good! _Mon_ Baree, he have the big, what-you-say,
sentiment."

"Sounds good." The telegrapher was busily putting it on the wire.
Then a wait of hours,--hours in which the operator varied his routine
by sending the word of the stricken country to Cheyenne, to Colorado
Springs, to Pueblo, and thence, through the news agencies, to the rest
of the world.

"Might as well get everybody in on it," he mused, as he pounded the
telegraph instrument; "can't tell--some of those higher-ups might be in
New York and think there wasn't anything to it unless they could see it
in the New York papers. I--" Then he stopped as the wire cut under
his finger and clattered forth a message. He jumped. He grasped
Ba'tiste in his lank arms, then turned beaming to the rest of the
gaping crowd.

"It's from the papers in Denver!" he shouted. "A joint message.
They've taken up the fight!"

A fight which had its echoes in the little railroad box car, the center
of the deadened, shrouded West Country, the news of which must travel
to Cheyenne, to Rawlins, thence far down through the northern country
over illy patched telegraph wires before it reached the place for which
it was intended, the box car and its men who came and went, eager for
the slightest word from the far-away, yet grudging of their time, lest
darkness still find them in the snows, and night come upon them
struggling to reach the little town and send them into wandering,
aimless journeys that might end in death. For the snows still swirled,
the storms still came and went, the red ball of the sun still refused
to come forth in its beaming strength. And it was during this period
of uncertainty that Houston met Ba'tiste Renaud, returning from a
cruising expedition far in the lake region, to find him raging, his
fists clenched, his eyes blazing.

"Is eet that the world is all unjust?" he roared, as he faced Houston.
"Is eet that some of us do our part, while others store up for
emergency? Eh? Bah! I am the mad enough to tear them apart!"

"Who? What's gone wrong?"

"I am the mad! You have no seen the M'sieu Thayer during all the
storm?"

"No."

"Nor the M'sieu Blackburn? Nor the men who work for them. Eh? You
have no seen them?"

"No, not once."

"Ah! I pass to-day the Blackburn mill. They have shovel out about the
sawshed. They have the saw going,--they keep at work, when there are
the women and the babies who starve, when there are the cattle who are
dying, when there is the country that is like a broken thing. But they
work--for themself! They saw the log into the tie--they work from the
piles of timber which they have about the sawmill, to store up the
supply. They know that we do not get our machinery! They have think
they have a chance--for the contract!"

It brought Houston to a sharp knowledge of conditions. They had given,
that the rest of the country might not suffer. Their enemies had
worked on, fired with the new hope that the road over the mountains
would not be opened; that the machinery so necessary to the carrying
out of Houston's contract would not arrive in time to be of aid. For
without the ability to carry out the first necessities of that
agreement, the rest must surely and certainly fail. Long before,
Houston had realized the danger that the storm meant; there had been no
emergency clause in the contract. Now his hands clenched, his teeth
gritted.

"It almost seems that there's a premium on being crooked, Ba'tiste,"
came at last. "It--"

Then he ceased. A shout had come from the distance. Faintly through
the sifting snow they could see figures running. Then the words
came,--faint, far-away, shrill shouts forcing their way through the
veil of the storm.

"They're going to open the road! They're going to open the road!"

Here, there and back again it came, men calling to men, the few women
of the little settlement braving the storm that they too might add to
the gladful cry. Already, according to the telegram, snow-fighting
machinery and men were being assembled in Denver for the first spurt
toward Tollifer, and from there through the drifts and slides of the
hills toward Crestline. Ba'tiste and Houston were running now, as fast
as their snowshoes would allow, oblivious for once of the cut of the
wind and the icy particles of its frigid breath.

"They open the road!" boomed Ba'tiste in chorus with the rest of the
little town. "Ah, _oui_! They open the road. The Crestline Railroad,
he have a heart after all, he have a--"

"Any old time!" It was a message bearer coming from the shack of a
station. "They're not going to do it--it's the M. P. & S. L."

"Through the tunnel?"

"No. Over the hill. According to the message, the papers hammered the
stuffing out of the Crestline road. But you've got to admit that they
haven't got either the motive power or the money. The other road saw a
great chance to step in and make itself solid with this country over
here. It's lending the men and the rolling stock. They're going to
open another fellow's road, for the publicity and the good will that's
in it."

A grin came to Houston's lips,--the first one in weeks. He banged
Ba'tiste on his heavily wadded shoulder.

"That's the kind of railroad to work for!"

"Ah, _oui_! And when eet come through--ah, we shall help to build it."

Two pictures flashed across Houston's brain; one of a snowy sawmill
with the force working day and night, when all the surrounding country
cried for help, working toward its selfish ends that it might have a
supply of necessary lumber in case a more humane organization should
fail; another of carload after carload of necessary machinery,
snow-covered, ice-bound, on a sidetrack at Tollifer, with the whole,
horrible, snow-clutched fierceness of the Continental Divide between it
and its goal.

"I hope so!" he exclaimed fervently. "I hope so!"

Then, swept along by hurrying forms, they went on toward the station
house, there to receive the confirmation of the glad news, to shout
until their throats were raw, and then, still with their duties before
them, radiate once more on their missions of mercy. For the
announcement of intention was no accomplishment. It was one thing for
the snowplows and the gangs and tremendous engines of the M. P. & S. L.
to attempt to open the road over the divide. But it was quite another
thing to do it!

All that day Houston thought of it, dreamed of it, tried to visualize
it,--the fight of a railroad against the snows of the hills. He
wondered how the snowplows would work, how they would break through the
long, black snowsheds, now crammed with the thing which they had been
built to resist. He thought of the laborers; and his breath pulled
sharply. Would they have enough men? It would be grueling work up
there, terrific work; would there be sufficient laborers who would be
willing to undergo the hardships for the money they received? Would--

In the night he awoke, again thinking of it. Every possible hand that
could swing a pick or jam a crowbar against grudging ice would be
needed up there. Every pair of shoulders willing to assume the burdens
of a horrible existence that others might live would be welcomed. A
mad desire began to come over him; a strange, impelling scheme took
hold of his brain. They would need men,--men who would not be afraid,
men who would be willing to slave day and night if necessary to the
success of the adventure. And who should be more willing than he? His
future, his life, his chance of success, where now was failure, lay at
Tollifer. His hands would be more than eager! His muscles more than
glad to ache with the fatigue of manual labor! Long before dawn he
rose and scribbled a note in the dim light of the old kerosene lamp in
the makeshift lobby, a note to Ba'tiste Renaud:

"I'm going over the range. I can't wait. They may need me. I'm
writing this, because you would try to dissuade me if I told you
personally. Don't be afraid for me--I'll make it somehow. I've got to
go. It's easier than standing by.

"HOUSTON."

Then, his snowshoes affixed, he went out into the night. The stars
were shining dimly, and Houston noticed them with an air of
thankfulness as he took the trail of the telephone poles and started
toward the faint outline of the mountains in the distance. It would
make things easier; but an hour later, as he looked for a dawn that did
not come, he realized that it had been only a jest of the night. The
storm clouds were thick on the sky again, the snow was dashing about
him once more; half-blindly, gropingly, he sought to force his way from
one pole to another,--in vain.

He measured his steps, and stopping, looked about him. He had traveled
the distance from one pole to another, yet in the sweep of the darting
sheet of white he could discern no landmark, nothing to guide him
farther on his journey. He floundered aimlessly, striving by short
sallies to recover the path from which the storm had taken him, but all
to no purpose. If dawn would only come!

Again and again, hardly realizing the dangers to which he was
subjecting himself, Houston sought to regain his lost sense of
direction. Once faintly, in the far-away, as the storm lifted for a
moment, he thought that he glimpsed a pole and hurried toward it with
new hope, only to find it a stalwart trunk of a dead tree, rearing
itself above the mound-like drifts. Discouraged, half-beaten, he tried
again, only to wander farther than ever from the trail. Dawn found him
at last, floundering hopelessly in snow-screened woods, going on toward
he knew not where.

A half-hour, then he stopped. Fifty feet away, almost covered by the
changing snows, a small cabin showed faintly, as though struggling to
free itself from the bonds of white, and Houston turned toward it
eagerly. His numbed hands banged at the door, but there came no
answer. He shouted; still no sound came from within, and he turned the
creaking, protesting knob.

The door yielded, and climbing over the pile of snow at the step,
Houston guided his snowshoes through the narrow door, blinking in the
half-light in an effort to see about him. There was a stove, but the
fire was dead. At the one little window, the curtain was drawn tight
and pinned at the sides to the sash. There was a bed--and the form of
some one beneath the covers. Houston called again, but still there
came no answer. He turned to the window, and ripping the shade from
its fastenings, once more sought the bed, to bend over and to stare in
dazed, bewildered fashion, as though in a dream. He was looking into
the drawn, haggard features of an unconscious woman, the eyes
half-open, yet unseeing, one emaciated hand grasped about something
that was shielded by the covers. Houston forced himself even closer.
He touched the hand. He called:

"Agnes!"

The eyelids moved slightly; it was the only evidence of life, save the
labored, irregular breathing. Then the hand moved, clutchingly.
Slowly, tremblingly, Houston turned back an edge of the blankets,--and
stood aghast.

On her breast was a baby--dead!

CHAPTER XX

There was no time for conjectures. The woman meant a human life,--in
deadly need of resuscitation, and Barry leaped to his task.

Warmth was the first consideration, and he hurried to the sheet-iron
stove, with its pile of wood stacked behind, noticing, as he built the
fire, cans and packages of provisions upon the shelf over the small
wooden table, evidence that some one other than the woman herself had
looked after the details of stocking the cabin with food and of
providing against emergencies. At least a portion of the wood as he
shoved it into the stove crackled and spit with the wetness of snow;
the box had been replenished, evidently within the last few days.

Soon water was boiling. Hot cloths went to the woman's head; quietly,
reverently, Barry had taken the still, small child from the tightly
clenched arm and covered it, on the little table. And with the touch
of the small, lifeless form, the resentment which had smoldered in
Houston's heart for months seemed to disappear. Instinctively he knew
what a baby means to a mother,--and she must be its mother. He
understood that the agony of loss which was hers was far greater even
than the agony which her faithlessness had meant for him. Gently,
almost tenderly, he went again to the bed, to chafe the cold, thin
wrists, to watch anxiously the eyes, then at last to bend forward. The
woman was looking at him, staring with fright in her gaze, almost
terror.

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