Chapter 9

Carson had experienced the blizzard on the range and knew the only safe course was to let the horse have the reins, and trust to its animal instinct to find a shelter. He drew the robes securely about Annie and endeavored to allay her fears, although conscious of the peril they were in. The horse was plodding its way through the snow-drifts and it was evident that the animal would soon become exhausted. The blizzard might last all night, or it might continue for three days. On those trackless wastes in such a storm death by freezing was almost certain, unless they reached a place of shelter. The hours dragged by. He kept up an incessant talking with Annie, lest she should fall into the fatal sleep. The girl was quick to perceive his tender care, and in full apprehension of their danger, felt a growing confidence in the man beside her. She knew that he fully realized their peril and admired him for his efforts to conceal his fears from her.

It was growing darker and the horse was moving with feeble steps. Carson was at the point of giving vent to his fears, when the animal stopped. He left the sleigh, and upon going to the horse's head, found they were beside a cabin. His heart gave a great leap of joy and he called exultantly to Annie.

The cabin was deserted, but, praise Providence, it was shelter. The door swung open on its hinges. There was a fireplace with some half-burned logs in a heap of ashes. When Annie was securely inside, he brought in the robes from the sleigh and next unhitched the horse and brought the animal inside the cabin. This made Annie's heart leap with joy; she had not considered how they would protect the horse, and this humane act on the part of Carson gave her the most implicit confidence in the man. There is nothing to fear from a man who is so kind to animals, was her mental comment.

Soon there was a blazing fire on the hearth. Some poles were found by the door. These Carson dug from the snow and brought inside. He had no axe with which to cut them, and in the emergency, he laid the ends together in the fire slantwise from the chimney, and as they burned away, he shoved the logs forward. The wind screamed in wildest fury, while the snow drifted in through the rough clapboard roof.

Until now no thought had been given to the lunch which Annie had prepared for the trip. She brought it out from among the wraps and when Carson gave the horse a buttered biscuit as his share of the meal, she watched the act with a thrill of gladness. The blazing logs gave warmth and light, and the man and woman sat and talked throughout the long watches of the night, while the snow drifted and the wind screamed and roared, making the loose clapboards of the roof creak and groan.

There these two, thrown together by the reckless hand of fate, told incidents of their lives and won the love and sympathy of each other. A new song was born in Carson's breast. For a moment he seemed to remember a former life; somewhere out in the wide, white waste and hush of infinite space, where they had known each other and now their souls imprisoned in forms of clay, they had met by chance and renewed an old affinity.

As she told him the simple story of her life, he listened with ever-increasing interest. An orphan at an early age, she had since lived in the home of her Uncle Amos. Everything had gone well until the last year, when her uncle brought Rayder to their home and insisted that she should regard him as a suitor for her hand. Rayder, old and grey, had dyed his whiskers and tried to appear boyish. His intentions were well enough--he would give her all she would ask that money could purchase--but she could not love the man and could never think of becoming his wife. Amos, her uncle, was a man of avarice and greed. He insisted that it was a duty she owed him for his fatherly care in bringing her up. He dwelt on the advantages it would be to him in his old age and that it would be only right for her to help him in this way. He had appealed to her generous nature and sought to make her believe this sacrifice on her part would be just and right. Amos' wife had taken the same view of the matter and urged that the wedding should be at an early date. Annie, alone in the world, had no one to whom she could go for counsel. Some of the coarse women of the mining camp who came to their home thought her the most fortunate of girls to have a suitor as rich as Rayder, and ridiculed the idea of her refusing to accept the greatest opportunity of her life. Some of their husbands were rough, uncouth men, who cared nothing for the luxuries of a home, spent most of their money and time drinking and gambling at the Lone Tree, and they gauged conditions as they were with themselves. They were honest-hearted women of the frontier who believed they were doing the girl a kindness. It was not through bravery that she was cool and collected, yesterday, in the presence of death from the lions, she told him, but because she had almost made up her mind that she did not care. Death had lost its terrors in the contemplation of impending fate.

He did not tell her of the burden of his heart. He did not feel that he dared to ask for sympathy. At that hour he would have given ten years of his life to undo his marriage with Mary Greenwater by the ancient custom of the Swiftest Horse. He knew the Indian woman and knew that she intended to kill him and yet he felt helpless, powerless. He did tell the girl beside him that he, too, was alone in the world and hoped to merit the love of a good woman and that his every act in life should go to prove his sincerity. And so, amid the wild scenes of the night, they talked.

At noon the following day, the storm abated and when the flurries of snow had ceased they saw the town of Del Norte well down on the plain.

Annie was received at the home of her friends with delight and when she told them of her recent adventures, they gave expression to heartfelt joy for Annie's safety, and called Carson a hero.

Carson did not leave Del Norte for six weeks. Meanwhile, Annie visited her friends. When the two were not together in the cozy parlor at Annie's host's, Carson kept close in his room at the hotel. He wanted to delay the meeting with Mary Greenwater as long as possible. If she was only a man,--ah, that would be different! It would then be knife to knife, or bullet to bullet--he would not shrink. But she was a woman, an educated Indian woman upon whom society had some claim, and she had some claim upon it.

Annie promised to become his wife and it was arranged that she should return to her uncle's home, and as soon as he could arrange his affairs at the mine they would go to an eastern state. He first intended, however, to make a clean breast of the Mary Greenwater affair, and trust his fate to her love for him.

When he reached the foot of the Sangre de Christo range, through the great depths of snow, he saw the fearful havoc of the snow slide and noted the slanting position of the edgewise cliff. Thinking it was of but recent occurrence, he hurried to Saguache and gave the alarm that two of his companions were buried beneath the mountain of snow.

In no place in the world does an appeal for help meet with a quicker response than among the pioneers of the west. The news flew over the town like wildfire that two miners were imprisoned in a snow slide. A relief party was organized at once and Carson led them to the base of the range.

Mary Greenwater saw Carson organizing the relief, she stood within a few feet of him unobserved, and could have shot him, but she knew better than shoot a man in the act of aiding the distressed. The crowd would hang her, woman or no woman, and she knew it. Some other time than this--she would wait.

XXV.

CORDS OF LOVE ARE STRONG.

Hattie Judson sat by the window overlooking the green wheat fields of the Los Ossis valley. The bells in the old mission were calling the humble worshippers of the valley, just as they had done for more than one hundred and forty years. She watched the blue haze of the valley growing denser in the shadows of the evening. She heard the low boom of a signal gun roll up from the sea. It was from the coast steamer in the open roadstead, the signal she was listening for in the hope that it would bring her a letter--the letter for which she had been waiting for six weeks.

The shadows from the coast hills crept up the valley, and the stars shone, when the whistle of the little narrow-gauge engine announced its arrival from the port. She put on her wraps and went to the postoffice and waited a good long hour before the mail was distributed. There was nothing in her box except the San Francisco paper. And yet she felt intuitively there must be some news. She returned to her home with a vague feeling of dread and lit the parlor lamp. Mechanically she scanned the headlines of the paper when her eye caught the line:

"Imprisoned Miners in Snow-slide; Relief Party Working Night and Day."

"Saguache, Colo.--Word reached here last night that John Buchan and James Winslow, miners working a claim on the Sangre de Christo range, were buried in their cabin beneath a snow slide. It is believed the men are alive although there seems to be small hope of rescuing them on account of an overhanging cliff which may topple at any moment, with the melting snows and crush them out of existence. Rescue parties are at work night and day."

The room seemed to whirl and grow dark as she finished reading. Tears came to her eyes and she cried aloud. The members of the family came to find the cause of her outcry and found her in a flood of tears. They read the dispatch and knew the cause. The paper was two days old from San Francisco. What could she do? She must know at once. She went to the telegraph office and sent a message of inquiry to the mayor of Saguache. It was twelve o'clock when the message came: "Lines all down in San Luis valley." There was a telegraph line to San Louis Obispo, but no coast line railroad nearer than Paso Robles Hot Springs, sixty miles inland. It would be three days before there was another steamer for San Francisco. She felt that if she waited the suspense would kill her. She must go to Saguache.

In the grey of the morning she was seated beside a driver in a light running rig behind the swiftest pair of horses in the town. The northern express was due at noon and the distance of sixty miles must be made. The fleet animals climbed the mountain slopes and crossed the divide of the Santa Lucia range, and went speeding through the beautiful Santa Marguerite valley with its carpet of green, enlivened with splashes of yellow from the wild mustard blossoms. Across the swift flowing ford of the Salinis river, through deep ravines and mountain gorges, and over miles and miles of sun-baked sand and dreary waste of stunted cactus and sagebrush, the horses sped.

The scorched winds of the desert caught up the sands and hurled them hot into their faces and stung them like tiny sparks.

Dripping with foam the horses were reined up at the depot platform in just five hours and fifty minutes from the time of starting--a record that stands in San Louis Obispo today as the best ever made, and that too by a big-hearted western man who did it only to aid a woman in distress.

The train sped over miles of brown and parched desert, studded with a growth of palms that rattled in the sultry wind like dried sunflower stalks. The scenes were scarcely noticed by Hattie as she sat in the coach busied with her own thoughts. The train was an express but it seemed to her to creep along. The rumble of the wheels clanking on the iron rails seemed to say: "You'll be too late, you'll be too late."

At Sacramento there was a wait of four hours for the east bound express, and Hattie sat in the depot where she could watch the clock, tick, tock, tick, tock--swinging the pendulum in these moments of suspense and waiting. Those monotonous sounds persistently repeated the single theme, seconds were born and ushered into eternity with the slow swing of the pendulum; every tick brought the time of starting nearer, but the pendulum swung so slow.

Those four hours watching the clock were the most tedious of her life. When the time was drawing nigh and the waiting passengers were stirring about, the man in the ticket office came out and wrote upon the blackboard, "East bound Express two hours late."

Again the slow swinging pendulum sent a torrent of woe to the unhappy girl, and when the train rolled into the yards she felt as though she had lived within sound of that clock for a year.

The green valley changed to the red earth of the foothills, still showing signs of the gold hunters of 1849. The puffing and wheezing of the engine told they were climbing steep grades, and soon they were in the snows of the Sierra Nevada mountains. The train entered the forty-two mile snow shed and when half way through struck a hand car, derailing the engine.

It was day without, but dark within the sheds. A kindly woman with her daughter occupied the berth opposite Hattie. She noticed the troubled look on the girl's face and from that time on until they separated at Cheyenne, did everything she could to make the journey pleasant. But there was the ever present suspense and doubt.

It was ten hours before the train was again under way, but they had lost the right of way on the road and were compelled to make frequent stops on the sidings to allow other trains to pass.

As the train skirted the Great Salt Lake with its bleak and desolate islands of rock rising in silhouette against the cold grey skies, Hattie compared the scene to the feeling of utter desolation within her soul.

A storm was raging on the Laramie plains and when the snow plow, driven by the tremendous force of an extra engine in front, stuck fast in the snow, she began to have some conception of the mighty force of an avalanche, and the difficulty of reaching imprisoned men beneath its weight.

The railroad ended at a little station in the San Luis valley and then followed many miles of staging in a crowded coach. Everywhere the girl met with the most profound respect and attention from fellow passengers. She was always given the best seat in the coach, and otherwise made as comfortable as circumstances would permit. Such was the gallantry of these men of the frontier to the girl who was traveling alone.

At the last stage station before reaching Saguache, she heard men talking of the imprisoned miners in the Sangre de Christo mountains, but she was unable to learn any of the particulars other than that the relief party was still working. When, at last, she alighted at the hotel in Saguache her first question was concerning the imprisoned men. They will have them out in a few days if nothing happens was the assurance given by the landlady. "They are alive, we know, for we can see the smoke coming out from under the rock."

The two men under the snow slide had been the talk of the town for days. Every day a new party went to the scene to relieve those who had worked the day and night before, tunneling up the steep mountain side through snow of an unknown depth.

When Hattie reached the tunnel she begged to be allowed to go to the end of it where the men were working. She was assisted up the mountain side by willing hands and when she reached the workers one of them said: "The boys are all right for we can hear their voices."

It was then she gave an exclamation of joy, and when Buchan said to me in the cabin, "It seems that I hear her voice," he was right.

XXVI.

WHEN THE DEATH GLOOM GATHERS.

Amos staggered out of the fog of powder smoke and groped his way to the door. He took the center of the street reeling as he went, and made his way to his home. The scenes at the Bucket of Blood were magnified in his whisky-crazed brain. He raved in wild delirium, fighting the demons that gathered around his bedside. The doctor came and shook his head. "He has been drinking so long that my medicine will not act," he said. Amos glared wildly from his bloodshot eyes when a monkey seemed to leap on the footboard. He held a glass in his hand. "Have a cocktail, Amos," said the monkey, as he tossed the liquid into the air and caught it in another glass. Amos' throat was parched and he wanted the cocktail, but the monkey did not give it to him. A rhinoceros came creeping through the wall and looked at him with its leaden eyes. The monkey tossed the cocktail into the wide open mouth of the rhinoceros, who smacked his lips and said to the monkey, "Let's play ante over."

"All right," replied the monkey, "what with?"

"Get his eye, get his eye," exclaimed the rhinoceros.

The monkey crept forward and plucked out one of Amos' eyes, as he groaned and yelled. For awhile the rhinoceros was on one side of the dresser and the monkey on the other, tossing his eye to and fro between them. The scene changed. He was on a white horse, plunging down a steep rocky road lined with trees on either side; pythons and rattlesnakes reached out from among the branches striking their fangs at his head. There was the form of a dead woman behind him on the horse. Her cold arms clung about his neck as little devils came out from behind the trees and shouted: "You did it; you did it." The horse was now plunging over a snow-covered country. He felt the icy winds chill his heart. He was trying to shake off the dead arms that clung to his neck, when the horse stopped in a wild spot among the rocks. A grave digger, with the flesh of face and arms dried to the bone, appeared. "We will bury her here," he said as he sunk his spade into the earth. As the grave digger threw up the clods they turned to little devils, the size of frogs and yelped, "We are the sins of Amos come out of the grave." The vision passed and another appeared. Three Sisters of Charity stood at the footboard of his bed. They were looking down on him with sorrowful eyes. One of them lifted her hand and all was a livid flame. Amos raised his head and gave one prolonged shriek. A shriek of death.

When Amos returned to Saguache after his spree with Rayder his first act was to purchase a ranch in the San Luis valley and deed it to his wife. He then went to his assay office and drew down the blinds and sat in the shadows like a cunning old spider in hiding waiting for the unwary fly for which he had wove his web. His life had been that of the iconoclast who creates nothing to adorn the world's great gallery of gods. But he was not philosophical enough to evolve an idea that would disrupt existing beliefs.

It was some weeks after his arrival home, when he espied Rayder one morning coming down the street towards his office. He cautiously turned the key in his office and slipped over to the Bucket of Blood and returned with some beer and two quart bottles of whisky. When Rayder returned an hour later he was maudlin drunk.

Rayder was still pale from the effects of his recent debauch and when he found Amos in an intoxicated condition he went away, not caring to stay and talk with him on important business matters lest he should get drawn into another spree. Meanwhile, Carson had arrived and spread the news of the imprisoned miners under the snow slide. Rayder learned that this was the mine he had come to purchase through the connivance of Amos and concluded to wait and see what time would develop.

Day after day he sought Amos, but the latter was too drunk to talk with any sense. He then sought Carson and offered financial assistance in the rescue work, but the men spurned the offer. They felt they were doing a God-given duty and to receive money for an act of that kind would be debasing their manhood. Such was it then and such is now the spirit of the West. He called at the Amos home, and while he was received by the matron and failed to see Annie, he thought he detected an air of distress in the surroundings, and attributed it to Amos' condition. Feeling that he was at their home at an inopportune time, he went away and started out to find Amos and if possible persuade him to quit drinking. Not finding him at his office he took a nearer route and entered the Bucket of Blood by the back door. He passed two or three hoboes sitting on beer kegs on the outside. "Say, old timer, can't I dig into ye for two bits?" asked one. The man was trembly and his lips quivered as he spoke. Remembering his own recent condition Rayder handed the fellow a dollar and motioning to the others, said: "Divide up." The men jumped to their feet with alacrity and followed the first man to the bar.

Rayder walked to the faro table where Amos sat with his back to him putting down twenty dollar gold pieces on the money. "I never squeal," Amos was saying to another man who was drawing out the cards from the box. "Bet yer life, man wins my money I never squeal," Amos was saying to the dealer. "Got skads of it anyhow, and when that's gone I know where to get a mine worth more an' a million." Rayder stood watching the player tossing twenty after twenty in gold and tapping a tiny bell now and then when a waiter came and took the orders from those seated around the table watching the game. They all called for whisky except the dealer, he took a cigar. It requires a clear head to deal faro.

Rayder grew tired of watching and sat down. He was thinking where did Amos get so much money? He had not attended to the business of his office since his recovery and had had no occasion to look into his check book. After a certain period of the night with Amos in his back office, everything was a blank. He remembered the conversation about Annie and the mine but had no recollection about signing the check. To see Amos sitting at that table losing money like a prince at Monte Carlo, almost took his breath. He began to feel certain now as to the fabulous riches of the mine, for he could conceive of no other way by which Amos could get possession of so much money. He had learned of Mrs. Amos purchasing the ranch and paying for it in gold, and wondered at the time. Then he thought that perhaps Amos was trying to throw him off the purchase of the mine in order to secure the property himself. There was a mystery somewhere he could not fathom.

The board partition against which he sat was thin, and while he was not playing eavesdropper, he could not help hearing: "The secret of that mine has been known to me since I was a child," a woman was saying, "but I never supposed Carson would locate it when I gave him the papers." And then she recounted the story of the hidden Spanish treasure in the Grand river hills and continued: "The two men they are trying to rescue from under the snow slide are dead long ago and the only one left that is interested is Carson. I will get him out of the way, and you must file on the claim, I cannot, for I am an Indian, but you can. Besides, I could never sing my death song in peace if he lives."

"Tonight, then," her companion said. "You had better act before matters go any farther."

Here was another revelation to Rayder, he saw coming through one archway an Indian woman, and through the other, Coyote Jim who slowly walked toward the faro table. Rayder's first and best impulse was to see Carson and warn him of impending danger. His second thought was that such a course would be bad financial policy. No, he would let the woman kill him if she could and he would jump the claim himself. He was certain now of its fabulous value and determined to have it at any price.

And so the old black crow sat and waited and plotted, while the other old black crow gambled away his money, and when the shooting was over, and the coal oil lamps flickered their sickly flame through the curling powder smoke, Rayder was raised from the floor where he had flattened himself against the baseboard, trembling like a frightened sheep about to be led to the slaughter.

XXVII.

A NIGHT OF TRAGEDIES.