CHAPTER XXV
IN THE BLIZZARD
"Swiftwater" Pete, the driver of the stage between Kusiak and Katma,did not like the look of the sky as his ponies breasted the long uphillclimb that ended at the pass. It was his habit to grumble. He had beencomplaining ever since they had started. But as he studied the heavybillows of cloud banked above the peaks and in the saddle between, therewas real anxiety in his red, apoplectic face.
"Gittin' her back up for a blizzard, looks like. Doggone it, if thatwouldn't jest be my luck," he murmured fretfully.
Sheba hoped there would be one, not, of course, a really, truly blizzardsuch as Macdonald had told her about, but the tail of a make-believeone, enough to send her glowing with exhilaration into the roadhousewith the happy sense of an adventure achieved. The girl had got out torelieve the horses, and as her young, lissom body took the hillscattering flakes of snow were already flying.
To-day she was buoyed up by a sense of freedom. For a time, at least,she was escaping Macdonald's driving energy, the appeal of GordonElliot's warm friendliness, and the unvoiced urging of Diane. Good oldPeter and the kiddies were the only ones that let her alone.
She looked back at the horses laboring up the hill. Swiftwater had gotdown and was urging them forward, his long whip crackling about the earsof the leaders. He waddled as he walked. His fat legs were too short forthe round barrel body. A big roll of fat bulged out over the collar ofhis shirt. Whenever he was excited--and he always was on the leastexcuse--he puffed and snorted and grew alarmingly purple.
"Fat chance," he exploded as soon as he got within hearing. "Snow inthose clouds--tons of it. H'm! And wind. Wow! We're in for anhonest-to-God blizzard, sure as you're a foot high."
Swiftwater was worried. He would have liked to turn and run for it. Butthe last roadhouse was twenty-seven miles back. If the blizzard camehowling down the slope they would have a sweet time of it reachingsafety. Smith's Crossing was on the other side of the divide, only ninemiles away. They would have to worry through somehow. Probably thoseangry clouds were half a bluff.
The temperature was dropping rapidly. Already snow fell fast in bigthick flakes. To make it worse, the wind was beginning to rise. It camein shrill gusts momentarily increasing in force.
The stage-driver knew the signs of old and cursed the luck that had ledhim to bring the stage. It was to have been the last trip with horsesuntil spring. His dogs were waiting for him at Katma for the returnjourney. He did not blame himself, for there was no reason to expectsuch a storm so early in the season. None the less, it was too bad thathis lead dog had been ailing when he left the gold camp eight daysbefore.
Miss O'Neill knew that Swiftwater Pete was anxious, and though she wasnot yet afraid, the girl understood the reason for it. The road ranthrough the heart of a vast snow-field, the surface of which was beingswept by a screaming wind. The air was full of sifted white dust, andthe road furrow was rapidly filling. Soon it would be obliterated.Already the horses were panting and struggling as they ploughed forward.Sheba tramped behind the stage-driver and in her tracks walked Mrs.Olson, the other passenger.
Through the muffled scream of the storm Swiftwater shouted back toSheba. "You wanta keep close to me."
She nodded her head. His order needed no explanation. The world wasnarrowing to a lane whose walls she could almost touch with her fingers.A pall of white wrapped them. Upon them beat a wind of stinging sleet.Nothing could be seen but the blurred outlines of the stage and thedriver's figure.
The bitter cold searched through Sheba's furs to her soft flesh and theblast of powdered ice beat upon her face. The snow was getting deeperas the road filled. Once or twice she stumbled and fell. Her strengthebbed, and the hinges of her knees gave unexpectedly beneath her. Howlong was it, she asked herself, that Macdonald had said men could livein a blizzard?
Staggering blindly forward, Sheba bumped into the driver. He had drawnup to give the horses a moment's rest before sending them plunging atthe snow again.
"No chance," he called into the young woman's ear. "Never make Smith'sin the world. Goin' try for miner's cabin up gulch little way."
The team stuck in the drifts, fought through, and was blocked again tenyards beyond. A dozen times the horses gave up, answered the sting ofthe whip by diving head first at the white banks, and were stopped byfresh snow-combs.
Pete gave up the fight. He began unhitching the horses, while Sheba andMrs. Olson, clinging to each other's hands, stumbled forward to joinhim. The words he shouted across the back of a horse were almost lost inthe roar of the shrieking wind.
"... heluvatime ... ride ... gulch," Sheba made out.
He flung Mrs. Olson astride one of the wheelers and helped Sheba to theback of the right leader. Swiftwater clambered upon its mate himself.
The girl paid no attention to where they were going. The urge of lifewas so faint within her that she did not greatly care whether she livedor died. Her face was blue from the cold; her vitality was sapped. Sheseemed to herself to have turned to ice below the hips. Outside themisery of the moment her whole attention was concentrated on stickingto the back of the horse. Numb though her fingers were, she must keepthem fastened tightly in the frozen mane of the animal. She recited herlesson to herself like a child. She must stick on--she must--she must.
Whether she lost consciousness or not Sheba never knew. The next sherealized was that Swiftwater Pete was pulling her from the horse. Hedragged her into a cabin where Mrs. Olson lay crouched on the floor.
"Got to stable the horses," he explained, and left them.
After a time he came back and lit a fire in the sheet-iron stove. As thecirculation that meant life flooded back into her chilled veins Shebaendured a half-hour of excruciating pain. She had to clench her teeth tokeep back the groans that came from her throat, to walk the floor andnurse her tortured hands with fingers in like plight.
The cabin was empty of furniture except for a home-made table, roughstools, and the frame of a bed. The last occupant had left a littlefirewood beside the stove, enough to last perhaps for twenty-four hours.Sheba did not need to be told that if the blizzard lasted long enough,they would starve to death. In the handbag left in the stage were a boxof candy and an Irish plum pudding. She had brought the latter from theold country with her and was taking it and the chocolates to the Hustedchildren. But just now the stage was as far from them as Drogheda.
Like many rough frontiersmen, Swiftwater Pete was a diamond in theraw. He had the kindly, gentle instincts that go to the making of agood man. So far as could be he made a hopeless and impossible situationcomfortable. His judgment told him that they were caught in a trap fromwhich there was no escape, but for the sake of the women he put acheerful face on things.
"Lucky we found this cabin," he growled amiably. "By this time we'd 'a'been up Salt Creek if we hadn't. Seeing as our luck has stood up so far,I reckon we'll be all right. Mighty kind of Mr. Last Tenant to leave usthis firewood. Comes to a showdown we've got one table, four stools, anda bed that will make first-class fuel. We ain't so worse off."
"If we only had some food," Mrs. Olson suggested.
"Food!" Pete looked at her in assumed surprise. "Huh! What about allthat live stock I got in the stable? I've heard tell, ma'am, thatbroncho tenderloin is a favorite dish with them there French chiefsthat do the cooking. They kinder trim it up so's it's 'most as good asfrawgs' legs."
Sheba had never before slept on bare boards with a sealskin coat for asleeping-bag. But she was very tired and dropped off almost instantly.Twice she woke during the night, disturbed by the stiffness and thepain of her body. It seemed to her that the hard, whipsawed planks werepushing through the soft flesh to the bones. She was cold, too, andcrept closer to the stout Swedish woman lying beside her. Presently shefell asleep again to the sound of the blizzard howling outside. When shewakened for the third time it was morning.
In the afternoon the blizzard died away. As far as she could see, Shebalooked out upon a waste of snow. Her ey
es turned from the desolationwithout to the bare and cheerless room in which they had found shelter.In spite of herself a little shiver ran down the spine of the girl. Hadshe come into this Arctic solitude to find her tomb?
Resolutely she brushed the gloomy thought from her mind and began tochat with Mrs. Olson. In a corner of the cabin Sheba had found a tornand disreputable copy of "Vanity Fair." The covers and the first fortypages were gone. A splash of what appeared to be tobacco juice defiledthe last sheet. But the fortunes of Becky and Amelia had served to makeher forget during the morning that she was hungry and likely to be muchhungrier before another day had passed.
As soon as the storm had moderated enough to let him go out withsafety, Swiftwater Pete had taken one of the horses for an attempt attrail-breaking.
"Me, I'm after that plum pudding. I gotta get a feed of oats from thestage for my bronchs too. The scenery here is sure fine, but it ain'twhat you would call nourishing. Huh! Watch our smoke when me and oldBaldface git to bucking them drifts."
He had been gone two hours and the early dusk was already descendingover the white waste when Sheba ventured out to see what had become ofthe stage-driver. But the cold was so bitter that she soon gave up theattempt to fight her way through the drifts and turned back to thecabin.
Sometime later Swiftwater Pete came stumbling into their temporary home.He was fagged to exhaustion but triumphant. Upon the table he droppedfrom the crook of his numbed arm two packages.
"The makings for a Christmas dinner," he said with a grin.
After he had taken off his mukluks and his frozen socks they wrappedhim in their furs while he toasted before the stove. Mrs. Olson thawedout the pudding and the chocolates in the oven and made a kind of mushout of some oats Pete had saved from the horse feed. They ate theirone-sided meal in high spirits. The freeze had saved their lives. If itheld clear till to-morrow they could reach Smith's Crossing on the crustof the snow.
Swiftwater broke up the chairs for fuel and demolished the legs of thetable, after which he lay down before the stove and fell at once into asodden sleep.
Presently Mrs. Olson lay down on the bed and began to snore regularly.Sheba could not sleep. The boards tired her bones and she was cold.Sometimes she slipped into cat naps that were full of bad dreams. Shethought she was walking on the snow-comb of a precipice and that ColbyMacdonald pushed her from her precarious footing and laughed at her asshe slid swiftly toward the gulf below. When she wakened with a start itwas to find that the fire had died down. She was shivering from lack ofcover. Quietly the girl replenished the fire and lay down again.
When she wakened with a start it was morning. A faint light siftedthrough the single window of the shack. Sheba whispered to the olderwoman that she was going out for a little walk.
"Be careful, dearie," advised Mrs. Olson. "I wouldn't try to go toofar."
Sheba smiled to herself at the warning. It was not likely that she wouldgo far enough to get lost with all these millions of tons of snow piledup around her in every direction.
She had come out because she was restless and was tired of the dingyand uncomfortable room. Without any definite intentions, she naturallyfollowed the trail that Swiftwater had broken the day before. No windstirred and the sky was clear. But it was very cold. The sun would notbe up for half an hour.
As she worked her way down the gulch Sheba wondered whether the news oftheir loss had reached Kusiak. Were search parties out already to rescuethem? Colby Macdonald had gone out into the blizzard years ago to saveher father. Perhaps he might have been out all night trying to save herfather's daughter. Peter would go, of course,--and Gordon Elliot. Thework in the mines would stop and men would volunteer by scores. That wasone fine thing about the North. It responded to the unwritten law that aman must risk his own life to save others.
But if the wires had come down in the storm Kusiak would not knowthey had not got through to Smith's Crossing. Swiftwater Pete spokecheerfully about mushing to the roadhouse. But Sheba knew the snowwould not bear the horses. They would have to walk, and it was not atall certain that Mrs. Olson could do so long a walk with the thermometerat forty or fifty below zero.
From a little knoll Sheba looked down upon the top of the stage threehundred yards below her, and while she stood there the promise of thenew day was blazoned on the sky. It came with amazing beauty of greenand primrose and amethyst, while the stars flickered out and the heavenstook on the blue of sunrise. In a crotch between two peaks a faintgolden glow heralded the sun. A circle of lovely rose-pink flushed thehorizon.
Sheba had this much of the poet in her, that every sunrise was still amiracle. She drew a deep, slow breath of adoration and turned away. Asshe did so her eyes dilated and her body grew rigid.
Across the snow waste a man was coming. He was moving toward the cabinand must cross the trench close to her. The heart of the girl stopped,then beat wildly to make up the lost stroke. He had come through theblizzard to save her.
At that very instant, as if the stage had been set for it, the wonderfulAlaska sun pushed up into the crotch of the peaks and poured its radianceover the Arctic waste. The pink glow swept in a tide of delicate colorover the snow and transmuted it to millions of sparkling diamonds. TheGreat Magician's wand had recreated the world instantaneously.