VII. THE LITTLE MAN
"I wisht you wasn't so set in your ways," Shorty demurred. "I'm surescairt of that glacier. No man ought to tackle it by his lonely."
Smoke laughed cheerfully, and ran his eye up the glistening face ofthe tiny glacier that filled the head of the valley. "Here it is Augustalready, and the days have been getting shorter for two months," heepitomized the situation. "You know quartz, and I don't. But I can bringup the grub, while you keep after that mother lode. So-long. I'll beback by to-morrow evening."
He turned and started.
"I got a hunch something's goin' to happen," Shorty pleaded after him.
But Smoke's reply was a bantering laugh. He held on down the littlevalley, occasionally wiping the sweat from his forehead, the while hisfeet crushed through ripe mountain raspberries and delicate ferns thatgrew beside patches of sun-sheltered ice.
In the early spring he and Shorty had come up the Stewart River andlaunched out into the amazing chaos of the region where Surprise Lakelay. And all of the spring and half of the summer had been consumed infutile wanderings, when, on the verge of turning back, they caught theirfirst glimpse of the baffling, gold-bottomed sheet of water which hadlured and fooled a generation of miners. Making their camp in the oldcabin which Smoke had discovered on his previous visit, they had learnedthree things: first, heavy nugget gold was carpeted thickly on the lakebottom; next, the gold could be dived for in the shallower portions, butthe temperature of the water was man-killing; and, finally, the drainingof the lake was too stupendous a task for two men in the shorter halfof a short summer. Undeterred, reasoning from the coarseness of the goldthat it had not traveled far, they had set out in search of the motherlode. They had crossed the big glacier that frowned on the southern rimand devoted themselves to the puzzling maze of small valleys and canyonsbeyond, which, by most unmountainlike methods, drained, or had at onetime drained, into the lake.
The valley Smoke was descending gradually widened after the fashion ofany normal valley; but, at the lower end, it pinched narrowly betweenhigh precipitous walls and abruptly stopped in a cross wall. At thebase of this, in a welter of broken rock, the streamlet disappeared,evidently finding its way out underground. Climbing the cross wall, fromthe top Smoke saw the lake beneath him. Unlike any mountain lake he hadever seen, it was not blue. Instead, its intense peacock-green tokenedits shallowness. It was this shallowness that made its drainingfeasible. All about arose jumbled mountains, with ice-scarred peaksand crags, grotesquely shaped and grouped. All was topsyturvy andunsystematic--a Dore nightmare. So fantastic and impossible was it thatit affected Smoke as more like a cosmic landscape-joke than a rationalportion of earth's surface. There were many glaciers in the canyons,most of them tiny, and, as he looked, one of the larger ones, on thenorth shore, calved amid thunders and splashings. Across the lake,seemingly not more than half a mile, but, as he well knew, five milesaway, he could see the bunch of spruce-trees and the cabin. He lookedagain to make sure, and saw smoke clearly rising from the chimney.Somebody else had surprised themselves into finding Surprise Lake, washis conclusion, as he turned to climb the southern wall.
From the top of this he came down into a little valley, flower-flooredand lazy with the hum of bees, that behaved quite as a reasonable valleyshould, in so far as it made legitimate entry on the lake. What waswrong with it was its length--scarcely a hundred yards; its head astraight up-and-down cliff of a thousand feet, over which a streampitched itself in descending veils of mist.
And here he encountered more smoke, floating lazily upward in the warmsunshine beyond an outjut of rock. As he came around the corner he hearda light, metallic tap-tapping and a merry whistling that kept the beat.Then he saw the man, an upturned shoe between his knees, into the soleof which he was driving hob-spikes.
"Hello!" was the stranger's greeting, and Smoke's heart went out to theman in ready liking. "Just in time for a snack. There's coffee in thepot, a couple of cold flapjacks, and some jerky."
"I'll go you if I lose," was Smoke's acceptance, as he sat down. "I'vebeen rather skimped on the last several meals, but there's oodles ofgrub over in the cabin."
"Across the lake? That's what I was heading for."
"Seems Surprise Lake is becoming populous," Smoke complained, emptyingthe coffee-pot.
"Go on, you're joking, aren't you?" the man said, astonishment paintedon his face.
Smoke laughed. "That's the way it takes everybody. You see those highledges across there to the northwest? There's where I first saw it. Nowarning. Just suddenly caught the view of the whole lake from there. I'dgiven up looking for it, too.
"Same here," the other agreed. "I'd headed back and was expecting tofetch the Stewart last night, when out I popped in sight of the lake. Ifthat's it, where's the Stewart? And where have I been all the time? Andhow did you come here? And what's your name?"
"Bellew. Kit Bellew."
"Oh! I know you." The man's eyes and face were bright with a joyoussmile, and his hand flashed eagerly out to Smoke's. "I've heard allabout you."
"Been reading police-court news, I see," Smoke sparred modestly.
"Nope." The man laughed and shook his head. "Merely recent Klondikehistory. I might have recognized you if you'd been shaved. I watched youputting it all over the gambling crowd when you were bucking roulettein the Elkhorn. My name's Carson--Andy Carson; and I can't begin to tellyou how glad I am to meet up with you."
He was a slender man, wiry with health, with quick black eyes and amagnetism of camaraderie.
"And this is Surprise Lake?" he murmured incredulously.
"It certainly is."
"And its bottom's buttered with gold?"
"Sure. There's some of the churning." Smoke dipped in his overallspocket and brought forth half a dozen nuggets. "That's the stuff. Allyou have to do is go down to bottom, blind if you want to, and pick up ahandful. Then you've got to run half a mile to get up your circulation."
"Well, gosh-dash my dingbats, if you haven't beaten me to it," Carsonswore whimsically, but his disappointment was patent. "An' I thought I'dscooped the whole caboodle. Anyway, I've had the fun of getting here."
"Fun!" Smoke cried. "Why, if we can ever get our hands on all thatbottom, we'll make Rockefeller look like thirty cents."
"But it's yours," was Carson's objection.
"Nothing to it, my friend. You've got to realize that no gold depositlike it has been discovered in all the history of mining. It will takeyou and me and my partner and all the friends we've got to lay our handson it. All Bonanza and Eldorado, dumped together, wouldn't be richerthan half an acre down here. The problem is to drain the lake. It willtake millions. And there's only one thing I'm afraid of. There's somuch of it that if we fail to control the output it will bring about thedemonetization of gold."
"And you tell me--" Carson broke off, speechless and amazed.
"And glad to have you. It will take a year or two, with all the moneywe can raise, to drain the lake. It can be done. I've looked over theground. But it will take every man in the country that's willing to workfor wages. We'll need an army, and we need right now decent men in onthe ground floor. Are you in?"
"Am I in? Don't I look it? I feel so much like a millionaire that I'mreal timid about crossing that big glacier. Couldn't afford to break myneck now. Wish I had some more of those hob-spikes. I was just hammeringthe last in when you came along. How's yours? Let's see."
Smoke held up his foot.
"Worn smooth as a skating-rink!" Carson cried. "You've certainly beenhiking some. Wait a minute, and I'll pull some of mine out for you."
But Smoke refused to listen. "Besides," he said, "I've got about fortyfeet of rope cached where we take the ice. My partner and I used itcoming over. It will be a cinch."
It was a hard, hot climb. The sun blazed dazzlingly on the ice-surface,and with streaming pores they panted from the exertion. There wereplaces, criss-crossed by countless fissures and crevasses, where an hourof dangerous toil advanced th
em no more than a hundred yards. At two inthe afternoon, beside a pool of water bedded in the ice, Smoke called ahalt.
"Let's tackle some of that jerky," he said. "I've been on shortallowance, and my knees are shaking. Besides, we're across the worst.Three hundred yards will fetch us to the rocks, and it's easy going,except for a couple of nasty fissures and one bad one that heads usdown toward the bulge. There's a weak ice-bridge there, but Shorty and Imanaged it."
Over the jerky, the two men got acquainted, and Andy Carson unbosomedhimself of the story of his life. "I just knew I'd find Surprise Lake,"he mumbled in the midst of mouthfuls. "I had to. I missed the FrenchHill Benches, the Big Skookum, and Monte Cristo, and then it wasSurprise Lake or bust. And here I am. My wife knew I'd strike it. I'vegot faith enough, but hers knocks mine galleywest. She's a corker,a crackerjack--dead game, grit to her finger-ends, never-say-die, afighter from the drop of the hat, the one woman for me, true blue andall the rest. Take a look at that."
He sprung open his watch, and on the inside cover Smoke saw the small,pasted photograph of a bright-haired woman, framed on either side by thelaughing face of a child.
"Boys?" he queried.
"Boy and girl," Carson answered proudly. "He's a year and a half older."He sighed. "They might have been some grown, but we had to wait. Yousee, she was sick. Lungs. But she put up a fight. What'd we knowabout such stuff? I was clerking, railroad clerk, Chicago, when we gotmarried. Her folks were tuberculous. Doctors didn't know much in thosedays. They said it was hereditary. All her family had it. Caught it fromeach other, only they never guessed it. Thought they were born withit. Fate. She and I lived with them the first couple of years. Iwasn't afraid. No tuberculosis in my family. And I got it. That set methinking. It was contagious. I caught it from breathing their air.
"We talked it over, she and I. Then I jumped the family doctor andconsulted an up-to-date expert. He told me what I'd figured out formyself, and said Arizona was the place for us. We pulled up stakes andwent down--no money, nothing. I got a job sheep-herding, and left her intown--a lung town. It was filled to spilling with lungers.
"Of course, living and sleeping in the clean open, I started right into mend. I was away months at a time. Every time I came back, she wasworse. She just couldn't pick up. But we were learning. I jerked herout of that town, and she went to sheep-herding with me. In four years,winter and summer, cold and heat, rain, snow, and frost, and all therest, we never slept under a roof, and we were moving camp all the time.You ought to have seen the change--brown as berries, lean as Indians,tough as rawhide. When we figured we were cured, we pulled out for SanFrancisco. But we were too previous. By the second month we both hadslight hemorrhages. We flew the coop back to Arizona and the sheep. Twoyears more of it. That fixed us. Perfect cure. All her family's dead.Wouldn't listen to us.
"Then we jumped cities for keeps. Knocked around on the Pacific coastand southern Oregon looked good to us. We settled in the Rogue RiverValley--apples. There's a big future there, only nobody knows it. I gotmy land--on time, of course--for forty an acre. Ten years from now it'llbe worth five hundred.
"We've done some almighty hustling. Takes money, and we hadn't a centto start with, you know--had to build a house and barn, get horses andplows, and all the rest. She taught school two years. Then the boy came.But we've got it. You ought to see those trees we planted--a hundredacres of them, almost mature now. But it's all been outgo, and themortgage working overtime. That's why I'm here. She'd 'a' come alongonly for the kids and the trees. She's handlin' that end, and here I am,a gosh-danged expensive millionaire--in prospect."
He looked happily across the sun-dazzle on the ice to the green water ofthe lake along the farther shore, took a final look at the photograph,and murmured:
"She's some woman, that. She's hung on. She just wouldn't die, thoughshe was pretty close to skin and bone all wrapped around a bit of firewhen she went out with the sheep. Oh, she's thin now. Never will be fat.But it's the prettiest thinness I ever saw, and when I get back, andthe trees begin to bear, and the kids get going to school, she and Iare going to do Paris. I don't think much of that burg, but she's justhankered for it all her life."
"Well, here's the gold that will take you to Paris," Smoke assured him."All we've got to do is to get our hands on it."
Carson nodded with glistening eyes. "Say--that farm of ours is theprettiest piece of orchard land on all the Pacific coast. Good climate,too. Our lungs will never get touched again there. Ex-lungers have to bealmighty careful, you know. If you're thinking of settling, well, justtake a peep in at our valley before you settle, that's all. And fishing!Say!--did you ever get a thirty-five-pound salmon on a six-ounce rod?Some fight, bo', some fight!"
"I'm lighter than you by forty pounds," Carson said. "Let me go first."
They stood on the edge of the crevasse. It was enormous and ancient,fully a hundred feet across, with sloping, age-eaten sides instead ofsharp-angled rims. At this one place it was bridged by a huge mass ofpressure-hardened snow that was itself half ice. Even the bottom of thismass they could not see, much less the bottom of the crevasse. Crumblingand melting, the bridge threatened imminent collapse. There were signswhere recent portions had broken away, and even as they studied it amass of half a ton dislodged and fell.
"Looks pretty bad," Carson admitted with an ominous head-shake. "And itlooks much worse than if I wasn't a millionaire."
"But we've got to tackle it," Smoke said. "We're almost across. We can'tgo back. We can't camp here on the ice all night. And there's no otherway. Shorty and I explored for a mile up. It was in better shape,though, when we crossed."
"It's one at a time, and me first." Carson took the part coil of ropefrom Smoke's hand. "You'll have to cast off. I'll take the rope and thepick. Gimme your hand so I can slip down easy."
Slowly and carefully he lowered himself the several feet to the bridge,where he stood, making final adjustments for the perilous traverse. Onhis back was his pack outfit. Around his neck, resting on his shoulders,he coiled the rope, one end of which was still fast to his waist.
"I'd give a mighty good part of my millions right now for abridge-construction gang," he said, but his cheery, whimsical smilebelied the words. Also, he added, "It's all right; I'm a cat."
The pick, and the long stick he used as an alpenstock, he balancedhorizontally after the manner of a rope-walker. He thrust one footforward tentatively, drew it back, and steeled himself with a visible,physical effort.
"I wish I was flat broke," he smiled up. "If ever I get out of being amillionaire this time, I'll never be one again. It's too uncomfortable."
"It's all right," Smoke encouraged. "I've been over it before. Betterlet me try it first."
"And you forty pounds to the worse," the little man flashed back."I'll be all right in a minute. I'm all right now." And this time thenerving-up process was instantaneous. "Well, here goes for Rogue Riverand the apples," he said, as his foot went out, this time to restcarefully and lightly while the other foot was brought up and past. Verygently and circumspectly he continued on his way until two-thirds of thedistance was covered. Here he stopped to examine a depression he mustcross, at the bottom of which was a fresh crack. Smoke, watching, sawhim glance to the side and down into the crevasse itself, and then begina slight swaying.
"Keep your eyes up!" Smoke commanded sharply. "Now! Go on!"
The little man obeyed, nor faltered on the rest of the journey. Thesun-eroded slope of the farther edge of the crevasse was slippery, butnot steep, and he worked his way up to a narrow ledge, faced about, andsat down.
"Your turn," he called across. "But just keep a-coming and don't lookdown. That's what got my goat. Just keep a-coming, that's all. And get amove on. It's almighty rotten."
Balancing his own stick horizontally, Smoke essayed the passage. Thatthe bridge was on its last legs was patent. He felt a jar under foot, aslight movement of the mass, and a heavier jar. This was followed by asingle sharp crackle. Behind him he knew someth
ing was happening. If forno other reason, he knew it by the strained, tense face of Carson. Frombeneath, thin and faint, came the murmur of running water, and Smoke'seyes involuntarily wavered to a glimpse of the shimmering depths. Hejerked them back to the way before him. Two-thirds over, he came to thedepression. The sharp edges of the crack, but slightly touched by thesun, showed how recent it was. His foot was lifted to make the stepacross, when the crack began slowly widening, at the same time emittingnumerous sharp snaps. He made the step quickly, increasing the strideof it, but the worn nails of his shoe skated on the farther slope of thedepression. He fell on his face, and without pause slipped down andinto the crack, his legs hanging clear, his chest supported by the stickwhich he had managed to twist crosswise as he fell.
His first sensation was the nausea caused by the sickening up-leap ofhis pulse; his first idea was of surprise that he had fallen no farther.Behind him was crackling and jar and movement to which the stickvibrated. From beneath, in the heart of the glacier, came the soft andhollow thunder of the dislodged masses striking bottom. And still thebridge, broken from its farthest support and ruptured in the middle,held, though the portion he had crossed tilted downward at a pitch oftwenty degrees. He could see Carson, perched on his ledge, his feetbraced against the melting surface, swiftly recoiling the rope from hisshoulders to his hand.
"Wait!" he cried. "Don't move, or the whole shooting-match will comedown."
He calculated the distance with a quick glance, took the bandana fromhis neck and tied it to the rope, and increased the length by a secondbandana from his pocket. The rope, manufactured from sled-lashings andshort lengths of plaited rawhide knotted together, was both light andstrong. The first cast was lucky as well as deft, and Smoke's fingersclutched it. He evidenced a hand-over-hand intention of crawling out ofthe crack. But Carson, who had refastened the rope around his own waist,stopped him.
"Make it fast around yourself as well," he ordered.
"If I go I'll take you with me," Smoke objected.
The little man became very peremptory.
"You shut up," he ordered. "The sound of your voice is enough to startthe whole thing going."
"If I ever start going--" Smoke began.
"Shut up! You ain't going to ever start going. Now do what I say. That'sright--under the shoulders. Make it fast. Now! Start! Get a move on, buteasy as you go. I'll take in the slack. You just keep a-coming. That'sit. Easy. Easy."
Smoke was still a dozen feet away when the final collapse of the bridgebegan. Without noise, but in a jerky way, it crumbled to an increasingtilt.
"Quick!" Carson called, coiling in hand-over-hand on the slack of therope which Smoke's rush gave him.
When the crash came, Smoke's fingers were clawing into the hard face ofthe wall of the crevasse, while his body dragged back with the fallingbridge. Carson, sitting up, feet wide apart and braced, was heaving onthe rope. This effort swung Smoke in to the side wall, but it jerkedCarson out of his niche. Like a cat, he faced about, clawing wildly fora hold on the ice and slipping down. Beneath him, with forty feet oftaut rope between them, Smoke was clawing just as wildly; and ere thethunder from below announced the arrival of the bridge, both men hadcome to rest. Carson had achieved this first, and the several pounds ofpull he was able to put on the rope had helped bring Smoke to a stop.
Each lay in a shallow niche, but Smoke's was so shallow that, tense withthe strain of flattening and sticking, nevertheless he would have slidon had it not been for the slight assistance he took from the rope.He was on the verge of a bulge and could not see beneath him. Severalminutes passed, in which they took stock of the situation and made rapidstrides in learning the art of sticking to wet and slippery ice. Thelittle man was the first to speak.
"Gee!" he said; and, a minute later, "If you can dig in for a moment andslack on the rope, I can turn over. Try it."
Smoke made the effort, then rested on the rope again. "I can do it," hesaid. "Tell me when you're ready. And be quick."
"About three feet down is holding for my heels," Carson said. "It won'ttake a moment. Are you ready?"
"Go on."
It was hard work to slide down a yard, turn over and sit up; but it waseven harder for Smoke to remain flattened and maintain a position thatfrom instant to instant made a greater call upon his muscles. As it was,he could feel the almost perceptible beginning of the slip when the ropetightened and he looked up into his companion's face. Smoke noted theyellow pallor of sun-tan forsaken by the blood, and wondered what hisown complexion was like. But when he saw Carson, with shaking fingers,fumble for his sheath-knife, he decided the end had come. The man was ina funk and was going to cut the rope.
"Don't m-mind m-m-me," the little man chattered. "I ain't scared. It'sonly my nerves, gosh-dang them. I'll b-b-be all right in a minute."
And Smoke watched him, doubled over, his shoulders between his knees,shivering and awkward, holding a slight tension on the rope with onehand while with the other he hacked and gouged holes for his heels inthe ice.
"Carson," he breathed up to him, "you're some bear, some bear."
The answering grin was ghastly and pathetic. "I never could standheight," Carson confessed. "It always did get me. Do you mind if I stopa minute and clear my head? Then I'll make those heel-holds deeper so Ican heave you up."
Smoke's heart warmed. "Look here, Carson. The thing for you to do isto cut the rope. You can never get me up, and there's no use both of usbeing lost. You can make it out with your knife."
"You shut up!" was the hurt retort. "Who's running this?"
And Smoke could not help but see that anger was a good restorativefor the other's nerves. As for himself, it was the more nerve-rackingstrain, lying plastered against the ice with nothing to do but strive tostick on.
A groan and a quick cry of "Hold on!" warned him. With face pressedagainst the ice, he made a supreme sticking effort, felt the ropeslacken, and knew Carson was slipping toward him. He did not dare lookup until he felt the rope tighten and knew the other had again come torest.
"Gee, that was a near go," Carson chattered. "I came down over a yard.Now you wait. I've got to dig new holds. If this danged ice wasn't somelty we'd be hunky-dory."
Holding the few pounds of strain necessary for Smoke with his left hand,the little man jabbed and chopped at the ice with his right. Ten minutesof this passed.
"Now, I'll tell you what I've done," Carson called down. "I've madeheel-holds and hand-holes for you alongside of me. I'm going to heavethe rope in slow and easy, and you just come along sticking an' not toofast. I'll tell you what, first of all. I'll take you on the rope andyou worry out of that pack. Get me?"
Smoke nodded, and with infinite care unbuckled his pack-straps. With awriggle of the shoulders he dislodged the pack, and Carson saw it slideover the bulge and out of sight.
"Now, I'm going to ditch mine," he called down. "You just take it easyand wait."
Five minutes later the upward struggle began. Smoke, after drying hishands on the insides of his arm-sleeves, clawed into the climb--bellied,and clung, and stuck, and plastered--sustained and helped by the pullof the rope. Alone, he could not have advanced. Despite his muscles,because of his forty pounds' handicap, he could not cling as did Carson.A third of the way up, where the pitch was steeper and the ice lesseroded, he felt the strain on the rope decreasing. He moved slower andslower. Here was no place to stop and remain. His most desperate effortcould not prevent the stop, and he could feel the down-slip beginning.
"I'm going," he called up.
"So am I," was the reply, gritted through Carson's teeth.
"Then cast loose."
Smoke felt the rope tauten in a futile effort, then the pace quickened,and as he went past his previous lodgment and over the bulge the lastglimpse he caught of Carson he was turned over, with madly moving handsand feet striving to overcome the downward draw. To Smoke's surprise, ashe went over the bulge, there was no sheer fall. The rope restrained himas he slid down a steeper pitch
, which quickly eased until he came to ahalt in another niche on the verge of another bulge. Carson was now outof sight, ensconced in the place previously occupied by Smoke.
"Gee!" he could hear Carson shiver. "Gee!"
An interval of quiet followed, and then Smoke could feel the ropeagitated.
"What are you doing?" he called up.
"Making more hand- and foot-holds," came the trembling answer. "You justwait. I'll have you up here in a jiffy. Don't mind the way I talk. I'mjust excited. But I'm all right. You wait and see."
"You're holding me by main strength," Smoke argued. "Soon or late, withthe ice melting, you'll slip down after me. The thing for you to do isto cut loose. Hear me! There's no use both of us going. Get that? You'rethe biggest little man in creation, but you've done your best. You cutloose."
"You shut up. I'm going to make holes this time deep enough to haul up aspan of horses."
"You've held me up long enough," Smoke urged. "Let me go."
"How many times have I held you up?" came the truculent query.
"Some several, and all of them too many. You've been coming down all thetime."
"And I've been learning the game all the time. I'm going on holding youup until we get out of here. Savvy? When God made me a light-weight Iguess he knew what he was about. Now, shut up. I'm busy."
Several silent minutes passed. Smoke could hear the metallic strike andhack of the knife and occasional driblets of ice slid over the bulgeand came down to him. Thirsty, clinging on hand and foot, he caught thefragments in his mouth and melted them to water, which he swallowed.
He heard a gasp that slid into a groan of despair, and felt a slackeningof the rope that made him claw. Immediately the rope tightened again.Straining his eyes in an upward look along the steep slope, he stareda moment, then saw the knife, point first, slide over the verge of thebulge and down upon him. He tucked his cheek to it, shrank from the pangof cut flesh, tucked more tightly, and felt the knife come to rest.
"I'm a slob," came the wail down the crevasse.
"Cheer up, I've got it," Smoke answered.
"Say! Wait! I've a lot of string in my pocket. I'll drop it down to you,and you send the knife up."
Smoke made no reply. He was battling with a sudden rush of thought.
"Hey! You! Here comes the string. Tell me when you've got it."
A small pocket-knife, weighted on the end of the string, slid down theice. Smoke got it, opened the larger blade by a quick effort of histeeth and one hand, and made sure that the blade was sharp. Then he tiedthe sheath-knife to the end of the string.
"Haul away!" he called.
With strained eyes he saw the upward progress of the knife. But he sawmore--a little man, afraid and indomitable, who shivered and chattered,whose head swam with giddiness, and who mastered his qualms anddistresses and played a hero's part. Not since his meeting with Shortyhad Smoke so quickly liked a man. Here was a proper meat-eater, eagerwith friendliness, generous to destruction, with a grit thatshaking fear could not shake. Then, too, he considered the situationcold-bloodedly. There was no chance for two. Steadily, they were slidinginto the heart of the glacier, and it was his greater weight that wasdragging the little man down. The little man could stick like a fly.Alone, he could save himself.
"Bully for us!" came the voice from above, down and across the bulge ofice. "Now we'll get out of here in two shakes."
The awful struggle for good cheer and hope in Carson's voice decidedSmoke.
"Listen to me," he said steadily, vainly striving to shake the vision ofJoy Gastell's face from his brain. "I sent that knife up for you to getout with. Get that? I'm going to chop loose with the jack-knife. It'sone or both of us. Get that?"
"Two or nothing," came the grim but shaky response. "If you'll hold on aminute--"
"I've held on for too long now. I'm not married. I have no adorable thinwoman nor kids nor apple-trees waiting for me. Get me? Now, you hike upand out of that!"
"Wait! For God's sake, wait!" Carson screamed down. "You can't do that!Give me a chance to get you out. Be calm, old horse. We'll make theturn. You'll see. I'm going to dig holds that'll lift a house and barn."
Smoke made no reply. Slowly and gently, fascinated by the sight, he cutwith the knife until one of the three strands popped and parted.
"What are you doing?" Carson cried desperately. "If you cut, I'll neverforgive you--never. I tell you it's two or nothing. We're going to getout. Wait! For God's sake!"
And Smoke, staring at the parted strand, five inches before his eyes,knew fear in all its weakness. He did not want to die; he recoiled fromthe shimmering abyss beneath him, and his panic brain urged all thepreposterous optimism of delay. It was fear that prompted him tocompromise.
"All right," he called up. "I'll wait. Do your best. But I tell you,Carson, if we both start slipping again I'm going to cut."
"Huh! Forget it. When we start, old horse, we start up. I'm a porousplaster. I could stick here if it was twice as steep. I'm getting asizable hole for one heel already. Now, you hush, and let me work."
The slow minutes passed. Smoke centered his soul on the dull hurt ofa hang-nail on one of his fingers. He should have clipped it away thatmorning--it was hurting then--he decided; and he resolved, once clearof the crevasse, that it should immediately be clipped. Then, withshort focus, he stared at the hang-nail and the finger with a newcomprehension. In a minute, or a few minutes at best, that hang-nail,that finger, cunningly jointed and efficient, might be part of a mangledcarcass at the bottom of the crevasse. Conscious of his fear, hehated himself. Bear-eaters were made of sterner stuff. In the anger ofself-revolt he all but hacked at the rope with his knife. But fearmade him draw back the hand and to stick himself again, trembling andsweating, to the slippery slope. To the fact that he was soaking wetby contact with the thawing ice he tried to attribute the cause of hisshivering; but he knew, in the heart of him, that it was untrue.
A gasp and a groan and an abrupt slackening of the rope, warned him. Hebegan to slip. The movement was very slow. The rope tightened loyally,but he continued to slip. Carson could not hold him, and was slippingwith him. The digging toe of his farther-extended foot encounteredvacancy, and he knew that it was over the straight-away fall. And heknew, too, that in another moment his falling body would jerk Carson'safter it.
Blindly, desperately, all the vitality and life-love of him beaten downin a flashing instant by a shuddering perception of right and wrong,he brought the knife-edge across the rope, saw the strands part, felthimself slide more rapidly, and then fall.
What happened then, he did not know. He was not unconscious, but ithappened too quickly, and it was unexpected. Instead of falling to hisdeath, his feet almost immediately struck in water, and he sat violentlydown in water that splashed coolingly on his face. His first impressionwas that the crevasse was shallower than he had imagined and that hehad safely fetched bottom. But of this he was quickly disabused. Theopposite wall was a dozen feet away. He lay in a basin formed in anout-jut of the ice-wall by melting water that dribbled and trickled overthe bulge above and fell sheer down a distance of a dozen feet. This hadhollowed out the basin. Where he sat the water was two feet deep, andit was flush with the rim. He peered over the rim and looked down thenarrow chasm hundreds of feet to the torrent that foamed along thebottom.
"Oh, why did you?" he heard a wail from above.
"Listen," he called up. "I'm perfectly safe, sitting in a pool of waterup to my neck. And here's both our packs. I'm going to sit on them.There's room for a half-dozen here. If you slip, stick close andyou'll land. In the meantime you hike up and get out. Go to the cabin.Somebody's there. I saw the smoke. Get a rope, or anything that willmake rope, and come back and fish for me."
"Honest!" came Carson's incredulous voice.
"Cross my heart and hope to die. Now, get a hustle on, or I'll catch mydeath of cold."
Smoke kept himself warm by kicking a channel through the rim with theheel of his shoe. By the time he
had drained off the last of the water,a faint call from Carson announced that he had reached the top.
After that Smoke occupied himself with drying his clothes. The lateafternoon sun beat warmly in upon him, and he wrung out his garmentsand spread them about him. His match-case was water-proof, and hemanipulated and dried sufficient tobacco and rice-paper to makecigarettes.
Two hours later, perched naked on the two packs and smoking, he heard avoice above that he could not fail to identify.
"Oh, Smoke! Smoke!"
"Hello, Joy Gastell!" he called back. "Where'd you drop from?"
"Are you hurt?"
"Not even any skin off!"
"Father's paying the rope down now. Do you see it?"
"Yes, and I've got it," he answered. "Now, wait a couple of minutes,please."
"What's the matter?" came her anxious query, after several minutes. "Oh,I know, you're hurt."
"No, I'm not. I'm dressing."
"Dressing?"
"Yes. I've been in swimming. Now! Ready? Hoist away!"
He sent up the two packs on the first trip, was consequently rebuked byJoy Gastell, and on the second trip came up himself.
Joy Gastell looked at him with glowing eyes, while her father and Carsonwere busy coiling the rope. "How could you cut loose in that splendidway?" she cried. "It was--it was glorious, that's all."
Smoke waved the compliment away with a deprecatory hand.
"I know all about it," she persisted. "Carson told me. You sacrificedyourself to save him."
"Nothing of the sort," Smoke lied. "I could see that swimming-pool rightunder me all the time."