As the laggards were brought up to a slight rise in the road, the flock was seen a hundred yards ahead, gathered in a dark ma.s.s about a telegraph-pole! It could be nothing else, for through the whirling snow the big cross-arms stood out, dim but unmistakable.
It was this that the gobbler had spied and started for, this sawed and squared piece of timber, that had suggested a barnyard to him,--corn and roost,--as to the boys it meant a human presence in the forest and something like human companionship.
It was after four o"clock now, and the night was hard upon them. The wind was strengthening every minute; the snow was coming finer and swifter. The boys" worst fears about the storm were beginning to be realized.
But the sight of the railroad track heartened them. The strong-armed poles, with their humming wires, reached out hands of hope to them; and getting among the turkeys, they began to hurry them off the track and down the steep embankment, which fortunately offered them here some slight protection from the wind. But as fast as they pushed the birds off, the one-minded things came back on the track. The whole flock, meanwhile, was scattering up and down the iron rails and settling calmly down upon them for the night.
They were going to roost upon the track! The railroad bank shelved down to the woods on each side, and along its whitened peak lay the two black rails like ridge-poles along the length of a long roof. In the thick half-light of the whirling snow, the turkeys seemed suddenly to find themselves at home: and as close together as they could crowd, with their b.r.e.a.s.t.s all to the storm, they arranged themselves in two long lines upon the steel rails.
And nothing could move them! As fast as one was tossed down the bank, up he came. Starting down the lines, the boys pushed and shoved to clear the track; but the lines re-formed behind them quickly, evenly, and almost without a sound. As well try to sweep back the waves of the sea! They worked together to collect a small band of the birds and drive them into the edge of the woods; but every time the band dwindled to a single turkey that dodged between their legs toward its place on the roost. The two boys could have kept _two_ turkeys off the rails, but not five hundred.
"The game is up, George," said Herbert, as the sickening thought of a pa.s.sing train swept over him.
The words were hardly uttered when there came the _tankle, tankle_ of the big cow-bell hanging from the collar of the horse, that was just now coming up to the crossing!
George caught his breath and started over to stop the horse, when, above the loud hum of the wires and the sound of the wind in the forest trees, they heard through the storm the m.u.f.fled whistle of a locomotive.
"Quick! The horse, Herbert! Hitch him to a tree and come!" called George, as he dived into the wagon and pulled out their lantern.
"Those birds could wreck the train!" he shouted, and hurried forward along the track with his lighted lantern in his hand.
It was not the thought of the turkeys, but the thought of the people on the flying Montreal express,--if that it was,--that sped him up the track. In his imagination he saw the wreck of a ditched train below him; the moans of a hundred mangled beings he heard sounding in his ears!
On into the teeth of the blinding storm he raced, while he strained his eyes for a glimpse of the coming train.
The track seemed to lie straightaway in front of him, and he bent his head for a moment before the wind, when, out of the smother of the snow, the flaring headlight leaped almost upon him.
He sprang aside, stumbled, and pitched headlong down the bank, as the engine of a freight, with a roar that dazed him, swept past.
But the engineer had seen him, and there was a screaming of iron brakes, a crashing of cars together, and a long-drawn shrieking of wheels, as the heavy train slid along the slippery rails to a stop.
As the engineer swung down from his cab, he was met, to his great astonishment, by a dozen turkeys clambering up the embankment toward him. He had plowed his way well among the roosting flock and brushed them unhurt from the rails as the engine skidded along to its slow stop.
By this time the conductor and the train-hands had run forward to see what it all meant, and stood looking at the strange obstruction on the track, when Herbert came into the glare of the headlight and joined them. Then George came panting up, and the boys tried to explain the situation. But their explanation only made a case of sheer negligence out of what at first had seemed a mystery to the trainmen. Both the engineer and the conductor were anxious and surly. Their train was already an hour late; there was a through express behind, and the track must be cleared at once.
And they fell at once to clearing it--conductor, fireman, brakemen, and the two boys. Those railroad men had never tried to clear a track of roosting turkeys before. They cleared it,--a little of it,--but it would not stay cleared, for the turkeys slipped through their hands, squeezed between their legs, ducked about their heels, and got back into place. Finally the conductor, putting two men in line on each rail, ordered the engineer to follow slowly, close upon their heels, with the train, as they scattered the birds before them.
The boys had not once thought of themselves. They had had no time to think of anything but the danger and the delay that they had caused.
They helped with all their might to get the train through, and as they worked, silently listened to the repeated threats of the conductor.
At last, with a muttered something, the conductor kicked one of the turkeys into a fluttering heap beneath the engine, and, turning, commanded his crew to stand aside and let the engineer finish the rest of the flock.
The men got away from the track. Then, catching Herbert by the arm, George pointed along the train, and bending, made a tossing motion toward the top of the cars.
"Quick!" he whispered. "One on every car!" and stepping calmly back in front of the engine, he went down the opposite side of the long train.
As he pa.s.sed the tender, he seized a big gobbler, and sent him with a wild throw up to the top of a low coal-car, just as Herbert, on his side, sent another fluttering up to the same perch. Both birds landed with a flap and a gobble that were heard by the other turkeys up and down the length of the train.
Instantly came a chorus of answering gobbles as every turkey along the track saw, in the failing light, that real, buildings--farmyard buildings--were here to roost on! And into the air they went, helped all along the train by the two boys, who were tossing them into the cars, or upon the loads of lumber, as fast as they could pa.s.s from car to car.
Luckily, the rails were sleety, and the mighty driving-wheels, spinning on the ice with their long load, which seemed to freeze continually to the track, made headway so slowly that the whole flock had come to roost upon the cars before the train was fairly moving.
Conductor and brakeman, hurrying back to board the caboose, were midway of the train before they noticed what was happening. _How_ it was happening they did not see at all, so hidden were the movements of the two boys in the swirl of the blinding snow.
For just an instant the conductor checked himself. But it was too late to do anything. The train was moving, and he must keep it moving as fast as he could to the freight-yards ahead at the junction--the very yards where, even now, an empty car was waiting for the overdue turkeys.
As he ran on down the track and swung aboard the caboose, two other figures closed in behind the train. One of them, seizing the other by the arm, landed him safe upon the steps, and then shouted at him through the storm:--
"Certainly you shall! I"m safe enough! I"ll drive on to that old sawmill to-night. Feed "em in the morning and wait for me! Good-by,"
and as the wind carried his voice away, George Totman found himself staring after a ghost-white car that had vanished in the storm.
He was alone; but the thought of the great flock speeding on to the town ahead was company enough. Besides, he had too much to do, and to do quickly, to think of himself; for the snow was blocking his road, and the cold was getting at him. But how the wires overhead sang to him! How the sounding forest sang to him as he went back to give the horse a s.n.a.t.c.h of supper!
He was soon on the road, where the wind at his back and the tall trees gave him protection. The four-wheeled wagon pulled hard through the piling snow, but the horse had had an easy day, and George kept him going until, toward eight o"clock, he drew up behind a lofty pile of slabs and sawdust at the old mill.
A wilder storm never filled the resounding forests of the North. The old mill was far from being proof against the fine, icy snow; but when George rolled himself in his heavy blanket and lay down beside his dog, it was to go to sleep to the comfortable munching of the horse, and with the thought that Herbert and the turkeys were safe.
And they were safe. It was late in the afternoon the next day when George, having left the wagon at the mill, came floundering behind the horse through the unbroken road into the streets of the junction, to find Herbert anxiously waiting for him, and the turkeys, with full crops, trying hard to go to roost inside their double-decked car.
CHAPTER III
WHITE-FOOT
The December rain was falling down, down, down, as if the drops were lead instead of water. The December sky, if you could call it sky, had settled down, down, down, as if it too were of lead, and were being propped up only by the tops of the stiff bare trees.
A green stick in the fireplace behind me sizzled and sputtered and blew its small steam whistles to warn me away from the window,--from the sight of the naked trees, and the cold, thick fog upon the meadow, and the blur of the pine woods beyond, and the rain falling down, down, down.
A dreary world out of doors surely, with not a sign of life! The pine tree, rising up above the hillside in front of the window, was green, but only a few lifeless leaves rattled among the middle branches of the oaks, while up in the stark top of a hickory sapling was wedged a robin"s nest, deserted and wet and going to pieces.
I shivered, in spite of the hearth-fire behind me, for the face of the gray gloom pressed close up against the window outside. And the empty robin"s nest, already a ruin! its mud walls broken, its tiny timbers hanging loose in the rain!
But what a large nest for a robin, I thought; and how strangely peaked and pointed it is, like a little hayc.o.c.k! Then all at once, inside of me, and all over me, I felt a warm, delightful feeling.
"It isn"t possible," said I aloud, but all to myself; "it isn"t possible that little White-Foot has moved into that old robin"s nest and fitted it up with a peaked roof for the winter?"
And the thought of it started the warm, delightful feeling again inside of me and all over me; and s.n.a.t.c.hing up the tongs by the fireplace I ran out into the December rain and tapped a few times on the slender hickory sapling.
And what do you think happened?
It stopped raining?
No.
You broke your tongs?