Part 29 (1/2)
Eagerly they cl.u.s.tered 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 wors.h.i.+ppers 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 Pa.s.s. 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 circ.u.mstances. 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 pa.s.s 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,”