Part 48 (1/2)
The violence of the storm precluded the use of horses about the camp, and the trail that slanted from the clearing to the water-hole was soon drifted high with snow, rendering useless the heavy tank-sled. Fallon, who had been placed in temporary charge of the camp, told the men into water-s.h.i.+fts; barrels were lashed to strong sleds and man-hauled to the top of the bank, where the guide-rope had been run to the water-hole.
The men of the s.h.i.+ft formed a long line reaching from the sled to the river, and the water dipped from the hole cut in the ice was pa.s.sed from man to man in buckets to be dumped into the barrels and distributed between the stables, cook-shack, bunk-house, and ”house.”
Darkness had fallen when the men of the afternoon s.h.i.+ft wallowed toward the river upon the last trip of the second day of the great blizzard.
The roar of the wind as it hurled the frozen particles against their cold-benumbed faces drowned their muttered curses as, thirty strong, they pushed and hauled the c.u.mbersome sled to the top of the bank.
Seizing the buckets, they strung out, making their way down the steep slope with one hand on the guide-rope.
Suddenly the foremost man stumbled and fell. He scrambled profanely to his knees and began feeling about in the thick darkness for his bucket.
His mittened hand came into contact with the object which, protruding from the snow, had tripped him, and with a vicious wrench he endeavored to remove it from the trail. It yielded a little, but remained firmly imbedded.
With a wild yell he forgot his bucket and began digging and clawing in the snow, for the object he grasped was the bent ash edge of a snowshoe, and firmly lashed in the center of the webbing was the moccasined foot of a man.
Other men came, floundering and sprawling over each other in the darkness, and the word was bellowed from lips to listening ear that a man lay buried beneath the drift.
”Dig! Ye tarriers!” roared Fallon as his heavy mittens gouged into the snow. ”Dig! Ut's th' boss!” he yelled into the ear of the nearest man.
”Oi know thim rackets!”
And from lip to bearded lip the word pa.s.sed, and the big men of the logs redoubled their efforts; but the fine snow had packed hard around the prostrate form, and it was many minutes before they had uncovered him sufficiently to note the smaller body lashed tightly upon his back.
The frozen lash was soon severed and the two exanimate bodies lifted in eager hands.
Buckets were left to snow under as the men crowded up the bank, howling into each other's ears. Big Stromberg, who bore the boss in his arms, was propelled up the steep slope by the men who crowded about him, pus.h.i.+ng, pulling, hauling--the ground-gaining, revolving wedge of the old days of ma.s.s formation in football.
”To th' office wid um!” roared Fallon in Stromberg's ear as they milled across the clearing. ”Th' b'ys'll crowd th' bunk-house till they hindher more thin hilp!”
The boy responded quickly to vigorous treatment and stimulants and was removed to his own bunk and placed under the able care of his Aunt Margaret and Mrs. Sheridan.
In the office Ethel Manton, white-faced and silent, watched breathlessly the efforts of Appleton and Blood River Jack to revive the exhausted and half-frozen foreman. The lumber magnate unscrewed the silver cap from a morocco-covered flask and poured out a generous dose of liquor; but before it reached the unconscious man's lips the half-breed stayed his hand.
”M's'u' Bill drinks no whisky,” he said. ”Even in the time of his great sickness would he drink no whisky; and if you give him whisky he will be very angry.”
Appleton paused and glanced curiously from the face of the half-breed to the still form upon the bunk, and the other continued:
”It is strange--I do not know--but he told it to Jeanne one day--that, in the great city of the white man is a girl he loves. He used to drink much whisky, and for that reason she sent him from her--and now he drinks no whisky--even though this girl has married another.”
Ethel stared at the speaker, wide-eyed, and the pallor of her face increased.
”Married another!” she gasped.
Jacques regarded her gravely. ”I know nothing except it was told me by Jeanne,” he returned--”how he talked in the voice of the fever-spirit, that this girl would marry another. In the paper he read it--but even so, will he drink no whisky. One week ago did he not hear how one night in the bunk-house Leduc tried to make the little boy drink whisky? And did he not hunt up Leduc the next morning, and, upon the skidway, smash the nose of him and knock four teeth from his jaw?”
The guide paused, and Appleton slowly screwed the silver top to his flask and returned it to his pocket.
”Upon the stove is a pot of very strong coffee which Daddy Dunnigan told me to bring,” Jacques went on; ”and he is even now making broth in the cook-shack. M's'u' Bill cannot die. The strong coffee and the good broth will bring him back to life; for he is called in the woods The-Man-Who-Cannot-Die.
”If he could die he would die in the blizzard. For, since blizzards were known, has no man done a thing like this--to search for two days and a night for one boy lost in the snow, and carry him home in safety.”
The half-breed finished, and the girl, with a low cry, sank into a chair and, leaning forward upon the desk, buried her face in her arms while her shoulders shook with the violence of her sobbing.