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. She thought she was walking on the snow-comb of a precipice and that Colby Macdonald pushed her from her precarious footing and laughed at her as she slid swiftly toward the gulf below. When she wakened with a start it was to find that the fire had died down. She was shivering from lack of cover. Quietly the girl replenished the fire and lay down again.
When she wakened with a start it was morning. A faint light sifted through the single window of the shack. Sheba whispered to the older woman that she was going out for a little walk.
"Be careful, dearie," advised Mrs. Olson. "I wouldn"t try to go too far."
Sheba smiled to herself at the warning. It was not likely that she would go far enough to get lost with all these millions of tons of snow piled up around her in every direction.
She had come out because she was restless and was tired of the dingy and uncomfortable room. Without any definite intentions, she naturally followed the trail that Swift.w.a.ter had broken the day before. No wind stirred and the sky was clear. But it was very cold. The sun would not be up for half an hour.
As she worked her way down the gulch Sheba wondered whether the news of their loss had reached Kusiak. Were search parties out already to rescue them? Colby Macdonald had gone out into the blizzard years ago to save her father. Perhaps he might have been out all night trying to save her father"s daughter. Peter would go, of course,--and Gordon Elliot. The work in the mines would stop and men would volunteer by scores. That was one fine thing about the North. It responded to the unwritten law that a man must risk his own life to save others.
But if the wires had come down in the storm Kusiak would not know they had not got through to Smith"s Crossing. Swift.w.a.ter Pete spoke cheerfully about mushing to the roadhouse. But Sheba knew the snow would not bear the horses. They would have to walk, and it was not at all certain that Mrs. Olson could do so long a walk with the thermometer at forty or fifty below zero.
From a little knoll Sheba looked down upon the top of the stage three hundred yards below her, and while she stood there the promise of the new day was blazoned on the sky. It came with amazing beauty of green and primrose and amethyst, while the stars flickered out and the heavens took on the blue of sunrise. In a crotch between two peaks a faint golden glow heralded the sun. A circle of lovely rose-pink flushed the horizon.
Sheba had this much of the poet in her, that every sunrise was still a miracle. She drew a deep, slow breath of adoration and turned away. As she did so her eyes dilated and her body grew rigid.
Across the snow waste a man was coming. He was moving toward the cabin and 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 the blizzard to save her.
At that very instant, as if the stage had been set for it, the wonderful Alaska sun pushed up into the crotch of the peaks and poured its radiance over the Arctic waste. The pink glow swept in a tide of delicate color over the snow and trans.m.u.ted it to millions of sparkling diamonds. The Great Magician"s wand had recreated the world instantaneously.
CHAPTER XXVI
HARD MUSHING
Elliot and Holt left Kusiak in a spume of whirling, blinding snow. They traveled light, not more than forty pounds to the dog, for they wanted to make speed. It was not cold for Alaska. They packed their fur coats on the sled and wore waterproof parkas. On their hands were mittens of moosehide with duffel lining, on their feet mukluks above "German"
socks. Holt had been a sour-dough miner too long to let his partner perspire from overmuch clothing. He knew the danger of pneumonia from a sudden cooling of the heat of the body.
Old Gideon took seven of his dogs, driving them two abreast. Six were huskies, rangy, muscular animals with thick, dense coats. They were in the best of spirits and carried their tails erect like their Malemute leader. Butch, though a Malemute, had a strong strain of collie in him.
It gave him a sense of responsibility. His business was to see that the team kept strung out on the trail, and Butch was a past-master in the matter of discipline. His weight was ninety-three fighting pounds, and he could thrash in short order any dog in the team.
The snow was wet and soft. It clung to everything it touched. The dogs carried pounds of it in the tufts of hair that rose from their backs.
An icy pyramid had to be knocked from the sled every half-hour. The snowshoes were heavy with white slush. Densely laden spruce boughs brushed the faces of the men and showered them with unexpected little avalanches.
They took turns in going ahead of the team and breaking trail. It was heavy, muscle-grinding work. Before noon they were both utterly fatigued. They dragged forward through the slush, lifting their laden feet sluggishly. They must keep going, and they did, but it seemed to them that every step must be the last.
Shortly after noon the storm wore itself out. The temperature had been steadily falling and now it took a rapid drop. They were pa.s.sing through timber, and on a little slope they built with a good deal of difficulty a fire. By careful nursing they soon had a great bonfire going, in front of which they put their wet socks, mukluks, scarfs, and parkas to dry.
The toes of the dogs had become packed with little ice b.a.l.l.s. Gordon and Holt had to go carefully over the feet of each animal to dig these out.
The old-timer thawed out a slab of dried salmon till the fat began to frizzle and fed each husky a pound of the fish and a lump of tallow.
He and Gordon made a pot of tea and ate some meat sandwiches they had brought with them to save cooking until night.
When they took the trail again it was in moccasins instead of mukluks.
The weather was growing steadily colder and with each degree of fall in the thermometer the trail became easier.
"Mushing at fifty below zero is all right when it is all right,"
explained Holt in the words of the old prospector. "But when it isn"t right it"s h.e.l.l."
"It is not fifty below yet, is it?"
"Nope. But she"s on the way. When your breath makes a kinder crackling noise she"s fifty."
Travel was much easier now. There was a crust on the snow that held up the dogs and the sled so that trail-breaking was not necessary. The little party pounded steadily over the barren hills. There was no sign of life except what they brought with them out of the Arctic silence and carried with them into the greater silence beyond. A little cloud of steam enveloped them as they moved, the moisture from the breath of nine moving creatures in a waste of emptiness.
Each of the men wrapped a long scarf around his mouth and nose for protection, and as the part in front of his face became a sheet of ice shifted the m.u.f.fler to another place.
Night fell in the middle of the afternoon, but they kept traveling. Not till they were well up toward the summit of the divide did they decide to camp. They drove into a little draw and unharnessed the weary dogs.
It was bitterly cold, but they were forced to set up the tent and stove to keep from freezing. Their numbed fingers made a slow job of the camp preparations. At last the stove was going, the dogs fed, and they themselves thawed out. They fell asleep shortly to the sound of the mournful howling of the dogs outside.
Long before daybreak they were afoot again. Holt went out to chop some wood for the stove while Gordon made breakfast preparations. The little miner brought in an armful of wood and went out to get a second supply.
A few moments later Elliot heard a cry.
He stepped out of the tent and ran to the spot where Holt was lying under a ma.s.s of ice and snow. The young man threw aside the broken blocks that had plunged down from a ledge above.
"Badly hurt, Gid?" he asked.
"I done bust my laig, son," the old man answered with a twisted grin.
"You mean that it is broken?"
"Tell you that in a minute."
He felt his leg carefully and with Elliot"s help tried to get up.
Groaning, he slid back to the snow.
"Yep. She"s busted," he announced.
Gordon carried him to the tent and laid him down carefully. The old miner swore softly.
"Ain"t this a h.e.l.l of a note, boy? You"ll have to get me to Smith"s Crossing and leave me there."
It was the only thing to be done. Elliot broke camp and packed the sled.
Upon the load he put his companion, well wrapped up in furs. He harnessed the dogs and drove back to the road.
Two miles farther up the road Gordon stopped his team sharply. He had turned a bend in the trail and had come upon an empty stage buried in the snow.
The fear that had been uppermost in Elliot"s mind for twenty-four hours clutched at his throat. Was it tragedy upon which he had come after his long journey?
Holt guessed the truth. "They got stalled and cut loose the horses. Must have tried to ride the cayuses to shelter."
"To Smith"s Crossing?" asked Gordon.