"If I could keep out of the fireman"s way, I should stand here," he said.
"There is room on the seat here, I think, if you have not wholly deserted me. Oh!"
"I didn"t mean to desert you. It is because the snow is packing harder that you are rocked more; the cab has really been riding very smoothly."
She moved forward on the box. "Are you going to sit down?"
"Thank you."
"Oh, don"t thank me. I shall feel ever so much safer if you will." He tried to edge up into the corner behind her, pushing the heavy cushion up to support her back. As he did so she turned impatiently, but he could not catch what she said. "Throw it away," she repeated. He chucked the cushion forward below her feet and was about to sit up where she had made room for him when the engineer put both hands to the throttle-bar and shut off. For the first time since they had started Gertrude saw him look around.
"Where"s Point of Rocks?" he called to Glover as they slowed, and he looked at his watch. "I"m afraid we"re by."
"By?" echoed Glover.
"It looks so."
The fireman opened his furnace with a bang. The engineer got stiffly down and straightened his legs while he consulted with Glover. Both knew they had been running past small stations without seeing them, but to lose Point of Rocks with its freight houses, coal chutes, and water tanks!
They talked for a minute, the engineer climbed up to his seat, the reverse lever was thrown over and they started cautiously back on a hunt for the lost station, both straining their eyes for a glimpse of a light or a building. For twenty minutes they ran back without finding a solitary landmark. When they stopped, afraid to retreat farther, Glover got out into the storm, walked back and forth, and, chilled to the bone, plunged through the shallow drifts from side to side of the right of way in a vain search for reckoning. Railroad men on the rotary, the second day after, exploded Glover"s torpedoes eleven miles west of Point of Rocks, where he had fastened them that night to the rails to warn the ploughs asked for when leaving Sleepy Cat.
With his clothing frozen he swung up into the cab. They were lost.
She could see his eyes now. She could see his face. Their perilous state she could not understand, nor know; but she knew and understood what she saw in his face and eyes--the resource and the daring. She saw her lover then, master of the elements, of the night and the danger, and her heart went out to his strength.
The three men talked together and the fireman asked the question that none dared answer, "What about the ploughs?"
Would Giddings hold them at Point of Rocks till the Special reported?
Would he send them out to keep the track open regardless of the Special"s reaching Point of Rocks?
Had they themselves reached Point of Rocks at all? If past it, had they been seen? Were the ploughs ahead or behind? And the fireman asked another question; if they were by the Point tank, would the water hold till they got to Medicine Bend? No one could answer.
There was but one thing to do; to keep in motion. They started slowly.
The alternatives were discussed. Glover, pondering, cast them all up, his awful responsibility, unconscious of her peril, watching him from the fireman"s box. The engineer looked to Glover instinctively for instructions and, hesitating no longer, he ordered a dash for Medicine Bend regardless of everything.
Without a qualm the engineer opened his throttle and hooked up his bar and the engine leaped blindly ahead into the storm. Glover, in a few words, told Gertrude their situation. He made no effort to disguise it, and to his astonishment she heard him quietly. He cramped himself down at her feet and m.u.f.fled his head in his cap and collar to look ahead.
They had hardly more than recovered their lost distance, and were running very hard when a shower of heavy blows struck the cab and the engine gave a frantic plunge. Forgetting that he pulled no train McGraw"s eyes flew to the air gauge with the thought his train had broken, but the pointer stood steady at the high pressure. Again the monster machine strained, and again the cab rose and plunged terrifically. The engineer leaped at the throttle like a cat; Gertrude, jolted first backward, was thrown rudely forward on Glover"s shoulder, and the fireman slid head first into the oil cans. Worst of all, Glover, in saving Gertrude, put his elbow through the lower gla.s.s of the running-board door. The engine stopped and a blast of powdered ice streamed in on them; their eyes met.
She tried to get her breath. "Don"t be frightened," he said; "you are all right. Sit perfectly still. What have you got, Paddy?" he called to the engineer. The engineer did not attempt to answer; taking lanterns, the two men climbed out of the cab to investigate. The wind swept through the broken pane and Gertrude slipped down from her seat with relief, while the fireman caught up a big double handful of waste from his box and stuffed it into the broken pane. So intense had the strain of silence become that she would have spoken to him, but the sudden stop sprung the safety-valve, and overwhelmed with its roar she could only watch him in wretched suspense shake the grate, restore his drip can, start his injector, and hammer like one pursued by a fury at the coal. Since she had entered the cab this man had never for one minute rested.
McGraw, followed by Glover, climbed back under the canvas from the gangway. Their clothing, moist with the steam of the cab, had stiffened the instant the wind struck it. McGraw hastening to the furnace seized the chain, jerked open the door and motioned to Glover to come to the fire, but Glover shook his head behind McGraw, his hands on the little man"s shoulders, and forced him down in front of the fearful blaze to thaw the gloves from his aching fingers.
All the horror of the storm they were facing had pa.s.sed Gertrude unfelt until she saw the silent writhing of the crouching man. This was three minutes of the wind that Glover had asked her not to tempt; this was the wind she had tempted. She was glad that Glover, bending over the engineer, holding one hand to the fire as he gazed into it, did not look toward her. From cap to boots he was frozen in snow and ice. The two men, without speaking, left the cab again. They were gone longer.
Gertrude felt chills running over her.
"This is a terrible night," she said to the fireman.
"Yes, ma"am, it"s pretty bad. I don"t know why they"d send white men out into this. I wouldn"t send a coyote out."
"They are staying out so long this time," she murmured. "Could they possibly freeze while they are out, do you think?"
"Sure, they could; but them boys know too much for that. Mr. Glover stays out a week at a time in this kind; he don"t care. That man Paddy McGraw is his head engineer in the bucking gang; he don"t care--them fellows don"t care. But I"ve got a wife at the Cat and two babies, that"s my fix. I never cared neither when I was single, but if I"m carried home now it"s seven hundred and fifty relief and a thousand dollars in the A. O. U. W., and that"s the end of it for the woman.
That"s why I don"t like to freeze to death, ma"am. But what can you do if you"re ordered out? Suppose your woman is a-hangin" to your neck like mine hung to me to-night and cryin"--whatever can you do? You"ve got to go or lose your job; and if you lose your job who"ll feed your kids then?"
McGraw"s head appeared under the canvas doorway. Glover did not follow him and Gertrude grew alarmed: but when the canvas rattled and she saw his cap she was waiting for him at the doorway and she put her hands happily on his frozen sleeve: "I"m so glad."
He looked at her with humor in his big eyes.
"I was afraid without you," she added, confusedly.
He laughed. "There"s nothing to be afraid of."
"Oh, you are so cold. Come to the fire."
"What do you think about the ploughs now?" he asked of McGraw, who had climbed up to his seat.
"How many is there?" returned the engineer as Glover shivered before the fire.
"There may be a thousand."
"What do you want me to do?"
"There"s only one thing, Paddy. Go through them," answered Glover, slamming shut the furnace door.
McGraw laid his bar over, and, like one putting his house in order, looked at his gauges and tried his valves.
"What is it?" whispered Gertrude, at Glover"s side.
He turned. "We"ve struck a bunch of sheep."
"Sheep?"
"In a storm they drift to keep from freezing out in the open. These sheep have bunched in a little cut out of the wind," he explained, as the fireman sprinkled the roaring furnace. "You had better get up on your seat, Miss Brock."
"But what are you going to do?"
"Run through them."
"Run through them? Do you mean to kill them?"
"We shall have to kill a few; there isn"t much danger."
"But oh, must you mangle those poor creatures huddling in the cut out of the storm? Oh, don"t do that."
"We can"t help it."
"Oh, yes, yes, you can if you will, I am sure." She looked at him imploringly.