Part 35 (1/2)

A repet.i.tion of the foul-smelling wooden tunnels, the sulphur fumes, the gasping of stricken men. The same long, horrible hours, the same staggering release from labor and the welcome hardness of a sleeping spot on a wooden floor. Night after night it was the same--starlight and snow, fair weather and storm. Barry Houston had become a rough-bearded, tattered piece of human machinery like all the rest.

Then, at last--

The sun! s.h.i.+ning faintly through the windows of the bunk car, it caused him to stir in his sleep. Dropping in a flood of ruby red, it still reflected faint streaks of color across the sky, when at last he started forth to what men had mentioned but seldom, and then with fear.

For to-night was the last night, the last either in the struggle or in the lives of those who had fought their way upward to the final barricade which yet separated them from the top of the world,--the Death Trail.

Smooth and sleek it showed before Houston in the early moonlight, an icy Niagara, the snow piled high above the railroad tracks, extending upward against an almost sheer wall of granite, in stacks and drifts, banked in places to a depth of a hundred feet. Already the plows were a.s.sembled,--four heavy steel monsters, with tremendous beams lashed in place and jutting upward, that they might break the overcasts and knock down the snow roofings that otherwise might form tunnels, breaking the way above as the tremendous fan of the plow would break it below. This was to be the fight of fights, there in the moonlight. Houston could see the engines breathing lazily behind their plows, sixteen great, steel contrivances, their burdens graduated in size from the tremendous auger at the fore to the lesser, almost diminutive one, by comparison, at the rear, designed to take the last of the offal from the track.

For there would be no ice here; the drippings of the snowsheds, with their accompanying stalact.i.tes and stalagmites, were absent. A quick shoot and a lucky one. Otherwise,--the men who went forward to their engines would not speak of it. But there was one who did.

She was standing beside the cook car as Houston pa.s.sed, and she looked toward him with a glance that caused Barry to stop and to wait, as though she had called to him. Hesitatingly she came forward, and Houston's dulled mentality at last took cognizance that a hand was extended slightly.

”You're still working on the engine?”

”Yes.”

”Then you'll be with them?”

”On the Death Trail? I expect to.”

”They talk of it as something terrible. Why?”

Houston pointed to the forbidding wall of snow. His thick, broken lips mumbled in the longest speech he had known in days.

”It's all granite up there. The cut of the roadbed forms a base for the remainder of the snow. It's practically all resting on the tracks; above, there's nothing for the snow to cling to. When we cut out the foundation--they're afraid that the vibration will loosen the rest and start an avalanche. It all depends whether it comes before--or after we've pa.s.sed through.”

”And you are not afraid?” She asked it almost childishly. He shook his head.

”I--don't know. I guess every one is--a bit afraid, when they're going into trouble. I know what I'm doing, if that's what you mean.”

She was silent for a long moment, looking up at the packed drifts, at the ragged outlines of the mountains against the moonlit sky, then into the valleys and the s.h.i.+mmering form of the round, icy lake, far below.

Her lips moved, and Barry went closer.

”Beg pardon?”

”Nothing--only there are some things I can't understand. It doesn't seem quite natural--”

”What?”

”That things could--” Then she straightened and looked at him with clear, frank eyes. ”Mr. Houston,” came quietly, ”I've been thinking about something all day. I have felt that I haven't been quite fair--that a man who has acted as you have acted since--since I met you this last time--that he deserves more of a chance than I have given him. That--”

”I'm asking nothing of you, Miss Robinette.”

”I know. I am asking something of you. I want to tell you that I have been hoping that you can some day furnish me the proof--that you spoke of once. I--that's what I wanted to tell you,” she ended quickly and extended her hand. ”Good-by. I'll be praying for all of you up there.”

Houston answered only with a pressure of his hand. His throat had closed suddenly. His breath jerked into his lungs; his burning, wind-torn lips ached to touch the hand that had lingered for a moment in his. He looked at her with eyes that spoke what his tongue could not say, then he went on,--a shambling, dead-tired man, even on awaking from sleep, but a man whose heart was beating with a new fervor. She would be praying for all of them up there at the Trail. And all of them included him.

At the cab of the engine, he listened to the final instructions of the cursing, anxious superintendent, then went to his black work of the shovel. Higher and higher mounted the steam on the gauge; theirs was the first plow, theirs the greatest task. For if they did not go through, the others could not follow; if their attack were not swift enough, staunch enough, the slide that was sure to come sooner or later would carry with it mangled machinery and the torn forms of men into a chasm of death. One by one the final orders came,--crisp, shouted, cursing commands, answered in kind. Then the last query:

”If there's a d.a.m.n man of you who's a coward, step out! Hear that? If you're afraid--come on--there's no stopping once you start!”