The White Desert

C >> Courtney Ryley Cooper >> The White Desert

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Houston steadied himself and sought to figure just what it did mean.
The sun was gone now, leaving grayness and blackness behind,
accentuated by the single strip of gleaming scarlet which flashed
across the sky above the brim of Mount Taluchen, the last vestige of
daylight. The wind was growing shriller and sharper, as though it had
waited only for the sinking of the sun to loose the ferocity which too
long had been imprisoned. Darkness came, suddenly, seeming to sweep up
from the valleys toward the peaks, and with it more snow. Barry
accepted the inevitable. He must go on--and that as swiftly as his
crippled machine, the darkness and the twisting, snow-laden,
treacherous road would permit.

Once more at the wheel, he snapped on the lights and huddled low, to
avail himself of every possible bit of warmth from the clanking,
discordant engine. Slowly the journey began, the machine laboring and
thundering with its added handicap of a broken rod and the consequent
lost power of one cylinder. Literally inch by inch it dragged itself
up the heavier grades, puffing and gasping and clanking, the rattling
rod threatening at every moment to tear out its very vitals. The heavy
smell of burnt oil drifted back to the nostrils of Barry Houston; but
there was nothing that he could do but grip the steering wheel a bit
tighter with his numbed hands,--and go on.

Slowly, ever so slowly, the indicator of the speedometer measured off a
mile in dragging decimals. The engine boiled and Barry stopped, once
more to huddle against the radiator, and to avail himself of its
warmth, but not to renew the water. No stream was near; besides, the
cold blast of the wind, shrilling through the open hood, accomplished
the purpose more easily. Again a sally and again a stop. And Barry
was thankful, as, huddled and shivering in his light clothing, he once
more sought the radiator. Vaguely there came to him the thought that
he might spend the night somewhere on the Pass and go on with the flush
of morning. But the thought vanished as quickly as it came; there was
no shelter, no blankets, nothing but the meager warmth of what fire he
might be able to gather, and that would fade the minute he nodded.
Already the temperature had sunk far beneath the freezing point; the
crackling of the ice in the gulleys of the road fairly shouted the fact
as he edged back once more from the radiator to his seat.

An hour--and three more after that--with the consequent stops and
pauses, the slow turns, the dragging process up the steeper inclines of
the road. A last final, clattering journey, and Barry leaped from the
seat with something akin to enthusiasm.

Through the swirling snow which sifted past the glare of his
headlights, he could discern a sign which told him he had reached the
summit, that he now stood at the literal top of the world.

But it was a silent world, a black world, in which the hills about him
were shapeless, dim hulks, where the wind whined, where the snow swept
against his face and drifted down the open space of his collar; a world
of coldness, of malice, of icy venom, where everything was a
threatening thing, and never a cheering aspect except the fact that the
grades had been accomplished, and that from now on he could progress
with the knowledge that his engine at least need labor no longer. But
the dangers! Barry knew that they had only begun. The descent would
be as steep as the climb he had just made. The progress must be
slower, if anything, and with the compression working as a brake. But
it was at least progress, and once more he started.

The engine clanked less now, the air seemed a bit warmer with the down
grade, and Barry, in spite of his fatigue, in spite of the
disappointment of a disabled car, felt at least the joy of having
conquered the thing which had sought to hold him back, the happiness of
having fought against obstacles, of having beaten them, and of knowing
that he now was on the down trail. The grade lessened for a few
hundred feet, and the machine slowed. Houston pressed on the clutch
pedal, allowing the car to coast slowly until the hill became steeper
again. Then he sought once more to shift into gear,--and stopped short!

Those few moments of coasting had been enough. Overheated, distended,
the bearings had cooled too suddenly about the crank shaft and frozen
there with a tightness that neither the grinding pull of the starter
nor the heavy tug of the down grade could loosen. Once more Barry
Houston felt his heart sink in the realization of a newer, a greater
foreboding than ever. A frozen crank shaft meant that from now on the
gears would be useless. Fourteen miles of down grade faced him. If he
were to make them, it must be done with the aid of brakes alone. That
was dangerous!

He cupped his hands and called,--in the vain hope that the stories of
Hazard Pass and its loneliness might not be true, after all. But the
only answer was the churning of the bank-full stream a hundred yards
away, the thunder of the wind through the pines below, and the eerie
echo of his own voice coming back to him through the snows.
Laboriously he left the machine and climbed back to the summit, there
to seek out the little tent house he had seen far at one side and which
he instinctively knew to be the rest room and refreshment stand of the
summer season. But he found it, as he had feared he would find it, a
deserted, cold, napping thing, without a human, without a single
comfort, or the possibility of fire or warmth through the night.
Summer, for Hazard Pass, at least, still was a full month away. For a
moment he shivered within it, staring about its bleak interior by the
aid of a flickering match. Then he went outside again. It was only a
shell, only a hope that could not be realized. It would be less of a
hardship to make the fight to reach the bottom of the Pass than to
attempt to spend the night in this flimsy contraption. In travel there
would be at least action, and Barry clambered down the hill to his
machine.

Again he started, the brake bands squeaking and protesting, the machine
sloughing dangerously as now and again its sheer weight forced it
forward at dangerous speeds until lesser levels could be reached and
the hold of the brake bands accomplish their purpose again. Down and
down, the miles slipping away with far greater speed than even Barry
realized, until at last--

He grasped desperately for the emergency brake and gripped tight upon
it, steering with one hand. For five minutes there had come the strong
odor of burning rubber; the strain had been too great, the foot-brake
linings were gone; everything depended upon the emergency now! And
almost with the first strain--

Careening, the car seemed to leap beneath him, a maddened, crazed
thing, tired of the hills, tired of the turmoil and strain of hours of
fighting, racing with all the speed that gravity could thrust upon it
for the bottom of the Pass. The brakes were gone, the emergency had
not even lasted through the first hill. Barry Houston was now a
prisoner of speed,--cramped in the seat of a runaway car, clutching
tight at the wheel, leaning, white, tense-faced, out into the snow, as
he struggled to negotiate the turns, to hold the great piece of runaway
machinery to the crusted road and check its speed from time to time in
the snowbanks.

A mile more--halted at intervals by the very thing which an hour or so
before Barry Houston had come almost to hate, the tight-packed banks of
snow--then came a new emergency. One chance was left, and Barry took
it,--the "burring" of the gears in lieu of a brake. The snow was
fading now, the air was warmer; a mile or so more and he would be safe
from that threat which had driven him down from the mountain
peaks,--the possibility of death from exposure, had he, in his light
clothing, attempted to spend the night in the open. If the burred
gears could only hold the car for a mile or so more--

But a sudden, snapping crackle ended his hope. The gears had meshed,
and meshing, had broken. Again a wild, careening thing, with no snow
banks to break the rush, the car was speeding down the steepest of the
grades like a human thing determined upon self-destruction.

A skidding curve, then a straightaway, while Barry clung to the wheel
with fingers that were white with the tightness of their grip. A
second turn, while a wheel hung over the edge, a third and--

The awful, suspended agony of space. A cry. A crash and a dull,
twisting moment of deadened Suffering. After that--blackness. Fifty
feet below the road lay a broken, crushed piece of mechanism, its
wheels still spinning, the odor of gasoline heavy about it from the
broken tank, one light still gleaming, like a blazing eye, one light
that centered upon the huddled, crumpled figure of a man who groaned
once and strove vaguely, dizzily, to rise, only to sink at last into
unconsciousness. Barry Houston had lost his fight.

How long he remained there, Barry did not know. He remembered only the
falling, dizzy moment, the second or so of horrible, racking suspense,
when, breathless, unable to move, he watched the twisting rebound of
the machine from which he had been thrown and sought to evade it as it
settled, metal crunching against metal, for the last time. After that
had come agonized hours in which he knew neither wakefulness nor the
quiet of total unconsciousness. Then--

Vaguely, as from far away, he heard a voice,--the sort of a voice that
spelled softness and gentleness. Something touched his forehead and
stroked it, with the caress that only a woman's hand can give. He
moved slightly, with the knowledge that he lay no longer upon the rocky
roughness of a mountain side, but upon the softness of a bed. A pillow
was beneath his head. Warm blankets covered him. The hand again
lingered on his forehead and was drawn away. A moment more and slowly,
wearily, Barry Houston opened his eyes.

It was the room of a mountain cabin, with its skiis and snowshoes; with
its rough chinkings in the interstices of the logs which formed the
mainstay of the house, with its four-paned windows, with its
uncouthness, yet with its comfort. Barry noticed none of this. His
eyes had centered upon the form of a girl standing beside the little
window, where evidently she had gone from his bedside.

Fair-haired she was, though Barry did not notice it. Small of build
and slight, yet vibrant with the health and vigor that is typical of
those who live in the open places. And there was a piquant something
about her too; just enough of an upturned little nose to denote the
fact that there was spirit and independence in her being; dark blue
eyes that snapped even as darker eyes snapped, as she stood, half
turned, looking out the window, watching with evident eagerness the
approach of some one Barry could not see. The lips carried a
half-smile of anticipation. Barry felt the instinctive urge to call to
her, to raise himself--

He winced with a sudden pain, a sharp, yet aching throb of agony which
involuntarily closed his eyes and clenched tight his teeth until it
should pass. When he looked again, she was gone, and the opening of a
door in the next room told him where. Almost wondering, he turned his
eyes then toward the blankets and sought to move an arm,--only again to
desist in pain. He tried the other, and it responded. The covers were
lowered, and Barry's eyes stared down upon a bandaged, splinted left
arm. Broken.

He grunted with surprise, then somewhat doggedly began an inspection of
the rest of his human machine. Gingerly he wiggled one toe beneath the
blankets. It seemed to be in working order. He tried the others, with
the same result. Then followed his legs--and the glorious knowledge
that they still were intact. His one free hand reached for his head
and felt it. It was there, plus a few bandages, which however, from
their size, gave Barry little concern. The inventory completed, he
turned his head at the sound of a voice--hers--calling from the doorway
to some one without.

"He's getting along fine, Ba'tiste." Barry liked the tone and the
enthusiastic manner of speaking. "His fever's gone down. I should
think--"

"Ah, _oui_!" had come the answer in booming bass. "And has he, what
you say, come to?"

"Not yet. But I think he ought to, soon."

"_Oui_! Heem no ver' bad. He be all right tomorrow."

"That's good. It frightened me, for him to be unconscious so long.
It's been five or six hours now, hasn't it?"

"Lemme see. I fin' heem six o'clock. Now--eet is the noon. Six hour."

"That's long enough. Besides, I think he's sleeping now. Come inside
and see--"

"Wait, _m' enfant_. M'sieu Thayer he come in the minute. He say he
think he know heem."

The eyes of Barry Houston suddenly lost their curiosity. Thayer? That
could mean only one Thayer! Barry had taken particular pains to keep
from him the information that he was anywhere except the East. For it
had been Fred Thayer who had caused Barry to travel across country in
his yellow speedster, Thayer who had formed the reason for the
displacement of that name plate at the beginning of Hazard Pass, Thayer
who--

"Know him? Is he a friend?"

"_Oui_. So Thayer say. He say he think eet is the M'sieu Houston, who
own the mill."

"Probably coming out to look over things, then?"

"_Oui_. Thayer, he say the young man write heem about coming. That is
how he know when I tell heem about picking heem up from the machine.
He say he know M'sieu Houston is coming by the automobile."

In the other room, Barry Houston blinked rapidly and frowned. He had
written Thayer nothing of the sort. He had-- Suddenly he stared
toward the ceiling in swift-centered thought. Some one else must have
sent the information, some one who wanted Thayer to know that Barry was
on the way, so that there would be no surprise in his coming, some one
who realized that his mission was that of investigation!

The names of two persons flashed across his mind, one to be dismissed
immediately, the other--

"I'll fire Jenkins the minute I get back!" came vindictively. "I'll--."

He choked his words. A query had come from the next room.

"Was that heem talking?"

"No, I don't think so. He groans every once in a while. Wait--I'll
look."

The injured man closed his eyes quickly, as he heard the girl approach
the door, not to open them until she had departed. Barry was thinking
and thinking hard. A moment later--

"How's the patient?" It was a new voice, one which Barry Houston
remembered from years agone, when he, a wide-eyed boy in his father's
care, first had viewed the intricacies of a mountain sawmill, had
wandered about the bunk houses, and ridden the great, skidding bobsleds
with the lumberjacks in the spruce forests, on a never-forgotten trip
of inspection. It was Thayer, the same Thayer that he once had looked
upon with all the enthusiasm and pride of boyhood, but whom he now
viewed with suspicion and distrust. Thayer had brought him out here,
without realizing it. Yet Thayer had known that he was on the way.
And Thayer must be combatted--but how? The voice went on, "Gained
consciousness yet?"

"No." The girl had answered. "That is--"

"Of course, then, he hasn't been able to talk. Pretty sure it's
Houston, though. Went over and took a look at the machine. Colorado
license on it, but the plates look pretty new, and there are fresh
marks on the license holders where others have been taken off recently.
Evidently just bought a Colorado tag, figuring that he'd be out here
for some time. How'd you find him?"

The bass voice of the man referred to as Ba'tiste gave the answer, and
Barry listened with interest. Evidently he had struggled to his feet
at some time during the night--though he could not remember it--and
striven to find his way down the mountain side in the darkness, for the
story of Ba'tiste told Barry that he had found him just at dawn, a full
five hundred yards from the machine.

"I see heem move," the big voice was saying, "jus' as I go to look at
my trap. Then Golemar come beside me and raise his hair along his neck
and growl--r-r-r-r-r-u-u-f-f-f--like that. I look again--it is jus' at
the dawn. I cannot see clearly. I raise my gun to shoot, and Golemar,
he growl again. Then I think eet strange that the bear or whatever he
is do not move. I say to Golemar, 'We will closer go, _ne c'est pas_?'
A step or two--then three--but he do not move--then pretty soon I look
again, close. Eet is a man, I pick heem up, like this--and I bring
heem home. _Ne c'est pas_, Medaine?"

Her name was Medaine then. Not bad, Barry thought. It rather matched
her hair and the tilt of her nose and the tone of her laugh as she
answered:

"I would say you carried him more like a sack of meal, Ba'tiste. I'm
glad I happened along when I did; you might have thrown him over your
shoulder!"

A booming laugh answered her and the sound of a light scuffle, as
though the man were striving to catch the girl in his big embrace. But
the cold voice of Thayer cut in:

"And he hasn't regained consciousness?"

"Not yet. That is, I think he's recovered his senses, all right, and
fallen immediately into a heavy sleep."

"Guess I'll go in and stay with him until he wakes up. He's my boss,
you know--since the old man died. We've got a lot of important things
to discuss. So if you don't mind--"

"Certainly not." It was the girl again. "We'll go in with you."

"No, thanks. I want to see him alone."

Within the bedroom, Barry Houston gritted his teeth. Then, with a
sudden resolve, he rested his head again on the pillow and closed his
eyes as the sound of steps approached. Closer they came to the bed,
and closer. Barry could feel that the man was bending over him,
studying him. There came a murmur, almost whispered:

"Wonder what the damn fool came out here about? Wonder if he's wise?"

CHAPTER III

It was with an effort that Houston gave no indication that he had
heard. Before, there had been only suspicions, one flimsy clue leading
to another, a building-block process, which, in its culmination, had
determined Barry to take a trip into the West to see for himself. He
had believed that it would be a long process, the finding of a certain
telegram and the possibilities which might ensue if this bit of
evidence should turn out to be the thing he had suspected. He had not,
however, hoped to have from the lips of the man himself a confession
that conditions were not right at the lumber mill of which Barry
Houston now formed the executive head; to receive the certain statement
that somewhere, somehow, something was wrong, something which was
working against the best interests of himself and the stern necessities
of the future. But now--

Thayer had turned away and evidently sought a chair at the other side
of the room. Barry remained perfectly still. Five minutes passed.
Ten. There came no sound from the chair; instinctively the man on the
bed knew that Thayer was watching him, waiting for the first flicker of
an eyelid, the first evidence of returning consciousness. Five minutes
more and Barry rewarded the vigil. He drew his breath in a shivering
sigh. He turned and groaned,--quite naturally with the pain from his
splintered arm. His eyes opened slowly, and he stared about him, as
though in non-understanding wonderment, finally to center upon the
window ahead and retain his gaze there, oblivious of the sudden tensity
of the thin-faced Thayer. Barry Houston was playing for time, playing
a game of identities. In the same room was a man he felt sure to be an
enemy, a man who had in his care everything Barry Houston possessed in
the world, every hope, every dream, every chance for the wiping out of
a thing that had formed a black blot in the life of the young man for
two grim years, and a man who, Barry Houston now felt certain, had not
held true to his trust. Still steadily staring, he pretended not to
notice the tall, angular form of Fred Thayer as that person crossed the
brightness of the window and turned toward the bed. And when at last
he did look up into the narrow, sunken face, it was with eyes which
carried in them no light of friendship, nor even the faintest air of
recognition. Thayer put forth a gnarled, frost-twisted hand.

"Hello, kid," he announced, his thin lips twisting into a cynical smile
that in days gone by had passed as an affectation. Barry looked
blankly at him.

"Hello."

"How'd you get hurt?"

"I don't know."

"Old Man Renaud here says you fell over the side of Two Mile Hill. He
picked you up about six o'clock this morning. Don't you remember?"

"Remember what?" The blank look still remained. Thayer moved closer
to the bed and bending, stared at him.

"Why, the accident. I'm Thayer, you know--Thayer, your manager at the
Empire Lake mill."

"Have I a manager?"

The thin man drew back at this and stood for a moment staring down at
Houston. Then he laughed and rubbed his gnarled hands.

"I hope you've got a manager. You--you haven't fired me, have you?"

Barry turned his head wearily, as though the conversation were ended.

"I don't know what you are talking about."

"You--don't--say, you're Barry Houston, aren't you?"

"I? Am I?"

"Well, then, who are you?"

The man on the bed smiled.

"I'd like to have you tell me. I don't know myself."

"Don't you know your name?"

"Have I one?"

Thayer, wondering now, drew a hand across his forehead and stood for a
moment in disconcerted silence. Again he started to frame a question,
only to desist. Then, hesitatingly, he turned and walked to the door.

"Ba'tiste."

"Ah, _oui_!"

"Come in here, will you? I'm up against a funny proposition. Mr.
Houston doesn't seem to be able to remember who he is."

"Ah!" Then came the sound of heavy steps, and Barry glanced toward the
door, to see framed there the gigantic form of a grinning, bearded man,
his long arms hanging with the looseness of tremendous strength, his
gray eyes gleaming with twinkling interest, his whole being and build
that of a great, good-humored, eccentric giant. His beard was
splotched with gray, as was the hair which hung in short, unbarbered
strands about his ears. But the hint of age was nullified by the cocky
angle of the blue-knit cap upon his head, the blazing red of his
double-breasted pearl-buttoned shirt, the flexible freedom of his
muscles as he strode within. Beside him trotted a great gray
cross-breed dog, which betokened collie and timber wolf, and which
progressed step by step at his master's knee. Close to the bed they
came, the great form bending, the twinkling, sharp eyes boring into
those of Houston, until the younger man gave up the contest and turned
his head,--to look once more upon the form of the girl, waiting
wonderingly in the doorway. Then the voice came, rumbling, yet
pleasant:

"He no remember, eh?"

"No. I know him all right. It's Barry Houston--I've been expecting
him to drop in most any day. Of course, I haven't seen him since he
was a kid out here with his father--but that doesn't make any
difference. The family resemblance is there--he's got his father's
eyes and mouth and nose, and his voice. But I can't get him to
remember it. He can't recall anything about his fall, or his name or
business. I guess the accident--"

"Eet is the--" Ba'tiste was waving one hand vaguely, then placing a
finger to his forehead, in a vain struggle for a word. "Eet is
the--what-you-say--"

"Amnesia." The answer had come quietly from the girl. Ba'tiste turned
excitedly.

"Ah, _oui_! Eet is the amnesia. Many time I have seen it--" he waved
a hand--"across the way, _ne c'est pas_? Eet is when the mind he will
no work--what you say--he will not stick on the job. See--" he
gesticulated now with both hands--"eet is like a wall. I see eet with
the shell shock. Eet is all the same. The wall is knock down--eet
will not hold together. Blooey--" he waved his hands--"the man he no
longer remember!"

This time the stare in Barry Houston's eyes was genuine. To hear a
girl of the mountains name a particular form of mental ailment, and
then to further listen to that ailment described in its symptoms by a
grinning, bearded giant of the woods was a bit past the comprehension
of the injured man. He had half expected the girl to say "them" and
"that there", though the trimness of her dress, the smoothness of her
small, well-shod feet, the air of refinement which spoke even before
her lips had uttered a word should have told him differently. As for
the giant, Ba'tiste, with his outlandish clothing, his corduroy
trousers and high-laced, hob-nailed boots, his fawning, half-breed dog,
his blazing shirt and kippy little knit cap, the surprise was all the
greater. But that surprise, it seemed, did not extend to the other
listener. Thayer had bobbed his head as though in deference to an
authority. When he spoke, Barry thought that he discerned a tone of
enthusiasm, of hope:

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