The Daughter of a Magnate Part 23

"Indeed I cannot. Listen a moment." He spoke steadily. The wheels were turning under her, the engine was backing for the dash. "We know now the ploughs are not ahead of us, for the cut is full of sheep and snow. If they are behind us we are in grave danger. They may strike us at any moment--that means, do you understand? death. We can't go back now; there's too much snow even if the track were clear. To stay here means to freeze to death." She turned restively from him. "Could you have thought it a joke," he asked, slowly, "to run a hundred and seventy miles through a blizzard?" She looked away and her sob cut him to the heart. "I did not mean to wound you," he murmured. "It's only that you don't realize what self-preservation means. I wouldn't kill a fly unnecessarily, but do you think I could stand it to see anyone in this cab mangled by a plough behind us--or to see you freeze to death if the engine should die and we're caught here twelve hours? It is our lives or theirs, that's all, and they will freeze anyway. We are only putting them out of their misery. Come; we are starting." He helped her to her seat.

"Don't leave me," she faltered. The cylinder c.o.c.ks were drumming wildly. "Which ever way we turn there's danger," he admitted, reluctantly, "a steam pipe might burst. You must cover your face."

She drew the high collar of her coat around her neck and buried her face in her m.u.f.f, but he caught up a blanket and dropped it completely over her head; then locking her arm in his own he put one heavy boot against the furnace door, and, braced between the woman he loved and the fire-box, nodded to the engineer--McGraw gave head.

Furred with snow, and bearded fearfully with ice; creeping like a mountain-cat on her prey; quivering under the last pound of steam she could carry, and hissing wildly as McGraw stung her heels again and again from the throttle, the great engine moved down on the blocked cut.

Unable to reckon distance or resistance but by instinct, and forced to risk everything for headway, McGraw p.r.i.c.ked the cylinders till the smarting engine roared. Then, crouching like a jockey for a final cruel spur he goaded the monster for the last time and rose in his stirrups for the crash.

With never a slip or a stumble, hardly reeling in her ponderous frame, the straining engine plunged headlong into the curve. Only once, she staggered and rolled; once only, three reckless men rose to answer death as it knocked at their hearts; but their hour was not come, and the engine struggled, righted, and parted the living drift from end to end.

CHAPTER XVIII

DAYBREAK

Crouching under the mountains in the grip of the storm Medicine Bend slept battened in blankets and beds. All night at the Wickiup, O'Neill and Giddings, gray with anxiety, were trying to keep track of Glover's Special. It was the only train out that night on the mountain division. For the first hour or two they kept tab on her with little trouble, but soon reports began to falter or fail, and the despatchers were reduced at last to mere rumors. They dropped boards ahead of Special 1018, only to find to their consternation that she was pa.s.sing them unheeded.

Once, at least, they knew that she herself had slipped by a night station unseen. Oftener, with blanched faces they would hear of her das.h.i.+ng like an apparition past a frightened operator, huddled over his lonely stove, a spectral flame shot across the fury of the sky--as if the dread night breathing on the sc.r.a.p-pile and the grave had called from other nights and other storms a wraith of riven engines and slaughtered men to one last phantom race with death and the wind.

Within two hours of division headquarters a train ran lost--lost as completely as if she were crossing the Sweetgra.s.s plains on pony trails instead of steel rails. Not once but a dozen times McGraw and Glover, p.a.w.ning their lives, left the cab with their lanterns in a vain endeavor to locate a station, a siding, a rock. Numbed and bitten at last with useless exposure they cast effort to the wind, gave the engine like a lost horse her head, and ran through everything for headquarters and life. Consultation was abandoned, worry put away, one good chance set against every other chance and taken in silence.

At five o'clock that morning despatchers and night men under the Wickiup gables, sitting moodily around the big stove, sprang to their feet together. From up the distant gorge, dying far on the gale, came the long chime blast of an engine whistle; it was the lost Special.

They crowded to the windows to dispute and listen. Again the heavy chime was sprung and a second blast, lasting and defiant, reached the Wickiup--McGraw was whistling for the upper yard and the long night of anxiety was ended. Unable to see a car length into the storm howling down the yard, save where the big arc-lights of the platform glared above the semaph.o.r.es, the men swarmed to the windows to catch a glimpse of the belated engine. When the rays of its electric headlight pierced the Western night they shouted like boys, ran to the telephones, and while the roundhouse, the superintendent, and the master-mechanic were getting the news the Special engine steamed slowly into sight through the whirling snow and stopped at the semaph.o.r.e. So a liner shaken in the teeth of a winter storm, battered by heading seas, and swept by stiffening spray, rides at last, ice-bound, staggering, majestic, into port.

The moment they struck the mountain-path into the Bend, McGraw and Glover caught their bearings by the curves, and Glover, standing at Gertrude's elbow, told her they were safe.

Not until he had laughed into her ear something that the silent McGraw, lying on his back under the engine with a wrench, when he confessed he never expected to see Medicine Bend again, had said of her own splendid courage did the flood spring from her eyes.

When Glover added that they were entering the gorge, and laughingly asked if she would not like to sound the whistle for the yard limits, she smiled through tears and gave him her hand to be helped down, cramped and chilled, from her corner.

At the moment that she left the cab she faltered again. McGraw stripped his cap from his head as she turned to speak. She took from the breast of her blouse her watch, dainty as a jewel, and begged him to take it, but he would not.

She drew her glove and stripped from her finger a ring.

"This is for your wife," she said, pressing it into his hand.

"I have no wife."

"Your sister."

"Nor sister."

"Keep it for your bride," she whispered, retreating. "It is yours.

Good-by, good-by!"

She sprang from the gangway to Glover's arms and the snow. The storm drove pitilessly down the bare street as she clung to his side and tried to walk the half block to the hotel. The wind, even for a single minute, was deadly to face. No light, no life was anywhere visible.

He led her along the lee of the low street buildings, and mindful of the struggle it was to make headway at all turned half between her and the wind to give her the shelter of his shoulders, halting as she stumbled to encourage her anew. He saw then that she was struggling in the darkness for breath, and without a word he bent over her, took her up like a child and started on, carrying her in his arms.

If he frightened her she gave no sign. She held herself for an instant uncertain and aloof, though she could not but feel the heavy draught she made on his strength. The wind stung her cheeks; her breath caught again in her throat and she heard him implore her to turn her face, to turn it from the wind. He stumbled as he spoke, and as she s.h.i.+elded her face from the deadly cold, one hand slipped from her m.u.f.f.

Reaching around his head she drew his storm-cap more closely down with her fingers. When he thanked her she tried to speak and could not, but her glove rested an instant where the wind struck his cheek; then her head hid upon his shoulder and her arms wound slowly and tightly around his neck.

He kicked open the door of the hotel with one blow of his foot and set her down inside.

In the warm dark office, breathing unsteadily, they faced each other.

"Can you, Gertrude, marry that man and break my heart?" He caught up her two hands with his words.

"No," she answered, brokenly. "Are you sure you are not frozen--ears or cheeks or hands?"

"You won't marry him, Gertrude, and break my heart? Tell me you won't marry him."

"No, I won't."

"Tell me again."

"Shall I tell you everything?"

"If you have mercy for me as I have love for you."

"I ran away from him to-night. He came out with the directors and telegraphed he would be at the Springs in the afternoon for his answer, and--I ran away. He has his answer long ago and I would not see him."

"Brave girl!"

"Oh, I wasn't brave, I was a dreadful coward. But I thought----"

"What?"

"--I could be brave, if I found as brave a man--as you."

"Gertrude, if I kiss you I never can give you up. Do you understand what that means? I never in life or death can give you up, Gertrude, do you understand me?"

She was crying on his shoulder. "Oh, yes, I understand," and he heard from her lips the maddening sweetness of his boy name. "I understand,"

she sobbed. "I don't care, Ab--if only--, you will be kind to me."

It was only a moment later--her head had not yet escaped from his arm, for Glover found for the first time that it is one thing to get leave to kiss a lovely woman and wholly another to get the necessary action on the conscience-stricken creature--she had not yet, I say, escaped, when a locomotive whistle was borne from the storm faintly in on their ears. To her it meant nothing, but she felt him start. "What is it?"

she whispered.

"The ploughs!"

"The ploughs?"

"The snow-ploughs that followed us. Twenty minutes behind--twenty minutes between us and death, Gertrude, in that blizzard, think of it.

That must mean we are to live."

The solemn thought naturally suggested, to Glover at least, a resumption of the status quo, but as he was locating, in the dark, there came from behind the stove a mild cough. The effect on the construction engineer of the whole blizzard was to that cough as nothing. Inly raging he seated Gertrude--indeed, she sunk quite faintly into a chair, and starting for the stove Glover dragged from behind it Solomon Battershawl. "What are you doing here?" demanded Glover, savagely.

"I'm night clerk, Mr. Glover--ow----"