VII. THE LITTLE MAN
"I wisht you wasn't so set in your ways," Shorty demurred. "I'm sure
scairt of that glacier. No man ought to tackle it by his lonely."
Smoke laughed cheerfully, and ran his eye up the glistening face of
the tiny glacier that filled the head of the valley. "Here it is
August already, and the days have been getting shorter for two
months," he epitomized the situation. "You know quartz, and I don't.
But I can bring up the grub, while you keep after that mother lode.
So-long. I'll be back by to-morrow evening."
He turned and started.
"I got a hunch something's goin' to happen," Shorty pleaded after him.
But Smoke's reply was a bantering laugh. He held on down the little
valley, occasionally wiping the sweat from his forehead, the while his
feet crushed through ripe mountain raspberries and delicate ferns that
grew beside patches of sun-sheltered ice.
In the early spring he and Shorty had come up the Stewart River and
launched out into the amazing chaos of the region where Surprise Lake
lay. And all of the spring and half of the summer had been consumed
in futile wanderings, when, on the verge of turning back, they caught
their first glimpse of the baffling, gold-bottomed sheet of water
which had lured and fooled a generation of miners. Making their camp
in the old cabin which Smoke had discovered on his previous visit,
they had learned three things: first, heavy nugget gold was carpeted
thickly on the lake bottom; next, the gold could be dived for in the
shallower portions, but the temperature of the water was man-killing;
and, finally, the draining of the lake was too stupendous a task for
two men in the shorter half of a short summer. Undeterred, reasoning
from the coarseness of the gold that it had not traveled far, they had
set out in search of the mother lode. They had crossed the big
glacier that frowned on the southern rim and devoted themselves to the
puzzling maze of small valleys and canyons beyond, which, by most
unmountainlike methods, drained, or had at one time drained, into the
lake.
The valley Smoke was descending gradually widened after the fashion of
any normal valley; but, at the lower end, it pinched narrowly between
high precipitous walls and abruptly stopped in a cross wall. At the
base of this, in a welter of broken rock, the streamlet disappeared,
evidently finding its way out underground. Climbing the cross wall,
from the top Smoke saw the lake beneath him. Unlike any mountain lake
he had ever seen, it was not blue. Instead, its intense peacock-green
tokened its shallowness. It was this shallowness that made its
draining feasible. All about arose jumbled mountains, with
ice-scarred peaks and crags, grotesquely shaped and grouped. All was
topsyturvy and unsystematic--a Dore nightmare. So fantastic and
impossible was it that it affected Smoke as more like a cosmic
landscape-joke than a rational portion of earth's surface. There were
many glaciers in the canyons, most of them tiny, and, as he looked,
one of the larger ones, on the north shore, calved amid thunders and
splashings. Across the lake, seemingly not more than half a mile,
but, as he well knew, five miles away, he could see the bunch of
spruce-trees and the cabin. He looked again to make sure, and saw
smoke clearly rising from the chimney. Somebody else had surprised
themselves into finding Surprise Lake, was his conclusion, as he
turned to climb the southern wall.
From the top of this he came down into a little valley, flower-floored
and lazy with the hum of bees, that behaved quite as a reasonable
valley should, in so far as it made legitimate entry on the lake.
What was wrong with it was its length--scarcely a hundred yards; its
head a straight up-and-down cliff of a thousand feet, over which a
stream pitched itself in descending veils of mist.
And here he encountered more smoke, floating lazily upward in the warm
sunshine beyond an outjut of rock. As he came around the corner he
heard a light, metallic tap-tapping and a merry whistling that kept
the beat. Then he saw the man, an upturned shoe between his knees,
into the sole of which he was driving hob-spikes.
"Hello!" was the stranger's greeting, and Smoke's heart went out to
the man in ready liking. "Just in time for a snack. There's coffee
in the pot, a couple of cold flapjacks, and some jerky."
"I'll go you if I lose," was Smoke's acceptance, as he sat down.
"I've been rather skimped on the last several meals, but there's
oodles of grub over in the cabin."
"Across the lake? That's what I was heading for."
"Seems Surprise Lake is becoming populous," Smoke complained, emptying
the coffee-pot.
"Go on, you're joking, aren't you?" the man said, astonishment painted
on his face.
Smoke laughed. "That's the way it takes everybody. You see those
high ledges across there to the northwest? There's where I first saw
it. No warning. Just suddenly caught the view of the whole lake from
there. I'd given up looking for it, too.
"Same here," the other agreed. "I'd headed back and was expecting to
fetch the Stewart last night, when out I popped in sight of the lake.
If that's it, where's the Stewart? And where have I been all the
time? And how did you come here? And what's your name?"
"Bellew. Kit Bellew."
"Oh! I know you." The man's eyes and face were bright with a joyous
smile, and his hand flashed eagerly out to Smoke's. "I've heard all
about you."
"Been reading police-court news, I see," Smoke sparred modestly.
"Nope." The man laughed and shook his head. "Merely recent Klondike
history. I might have recognized you if you'd been shaved. I watched
you putting it all over the gambling crowd when you were bucking
roulette in the Elkhorn. My name's Carson--Andy Carson; and I can't
begin to tell you how glad I am to meet up with you."
He was a slender man, wiry with health, with quick black eyes and a
magnetism of camaraderie.
"And this is Surprise Lake?" he murmured incredulously.
"It certainly is."
"And its bottom's buttered with gold?"
"Sure. There's some of the churning." Smoke dipped in his overalls
pocket and brought forth half a dozen nuggets. "That's the stuff.
All you have to do is go down to bottom, blind if you want to, and
pick up a handful. Then you've got to run half a mile to get up your
circulation."
"Well, gosh-dash my dingbats, if you haven't beaten me to it," Carson
swore whimsically, but his disappointment was patent. "An' I thought
I'd scooped the whole caboodle. Anyway, I've had the fun of getting
here."
"Fun!" Smoke cried. "Why, if we can ever get our hands on all that
bottom, we'll make Rockefeller look like thirty cents."
"But it's yours," was Carson's objection.
"Nothing to it, my friend. You've got to realize that no gold deposit
like it has been discovered in all the history of mining. It will
take you and me and my partner and all the friends we've got to lay
our hands on it. All Bonanza and Eldorado, dumped together, wouldn't
be richer than half an acre down here. The problem is to drain the
lake. It will take millions. And there's only one thing I'm afraid
of. There's so much of it that if we fail to control the output it
will bring about the demonetization of gold."
"And you tell me--" Carson broke off, speechless and amazed.
"And glad to have you. It will take a year or two, with all the money
we can raise, to drain the lake. It can be done. I've looked over
the ground. But it will take every man in the country that's willing
to work for wages. We'll need an army, and we need right now decent
men in on the ground floor. Are you in?"
"Am I in? Don't I look it? I feel so much like a millionaire that
I'm real timid about crossing that big glacier. Couldn't afford to
break my neck now. Wish I had some more of those hob-spikes. I was
just hammering the last in when you came along. How's yours? Let's
see."
Smoke held up his foot.
"Worn smooth as a skating-rink!" Carson cried. "You've certainly been
hiking some. Wait a minute, and I'll pull some of mine out for you."
But Smoke refused to listen. "Besides," he said, "I've got about
forty feet of rope cached where we take the ice. My partner and I
used it coming over. It will be a cinch."
It was a hard, hot climb. The sun blazed dazzlingly on the
ice-surface, and with streaming pores they panted from the exertion.
There were places, criss-crossed by countless fissures and crevasses,
where an hour of dangerous toil advanced them no more than a hundred
yards. At two in the afternoon, beside a pool of water bedded in the
ice, Smoke called a halt.
"Let's tackle some of that jerky," he said. "I've been on short
allowance, and my knees are shaking. Besides, we're across the worst.
Three hundred yards will fetch us to the rocks, and it's easy going,
except for a couple of nasty fissures and one bad one that heads us
down toward the bulge. There's a weak ice-bridge there, but Shorty
and I managed it."
Over the jerky, the two men got acquainted, and Andy Carson unbosomed
himself of the story of his life. "I just knew I'd find Surprise
Lake," he mumbled in the midst of mouthfuls. "I had to. I missed the
French Hill Benches, the Big Skookum, and Monte Cristo, and then it
was Surprise Lake or bust. And here I am. My wife knew I'd strike
it. I've got faith enough, but hers knocks mine galleywest. She's a
corker, a crackerjack--dead game, grit to her finger-ends,
never-say-die, a fighter from the drop of the hat, the one woman for
me, true blue and all the rest. Take a look at that."
He sprung open his watch, and on the inside cover Smoke saw the small,
pasted photograph of a bright-haired woman, framed on either side by
the laughing face of a child.
"Boys?" he queried.
"Boy and girl," Carson answered proudly. "He's a year and a half
older." He sighed. "They might have been some grown, but we had to
wait. You see, she was sick. Lungs. But she put up a fight. What'd
we know about such stuff? I was clerking, railroad clerk, Chicago,
when we got married. Her folks were tuberculous. Doctors didn't know
much in those days. They said it was hereditary. All her family had
it. Caught it from each other, only they never guessed it. Thought
they were born with it. Fate. She and I lived with them the first
couple of years. I wasn't afraid. No tuberculosis in my family. And
I got it. That set me thinking. It was contagious. I caught it from
breathing their air.
"We talked it over, she and I. Then I jumped the family doctor and
consulted an up-to-date expert. He told me what I'd figured out for
myself, and said Arizona was the place for us. We pulled up stakes
and went down--no money, nothing. I got a job sheep-herding, and left
her in town--a lung town. It was filled to spilling with lungers.
"Of course, living and sleeping in the clean open, I started right in
to mend. I was away months at a time. Every time I came back, she
was worse. She just couldn't pick up. But we were learning. I
jerked her out of that town, and she went to sheep-herding with me.
In four years, winter and summer, cold and heat, rain, snow, and
frost, and all the rest, we never slept under a roof, and we were
moving camp all the time. You ought to have seen the change--brown as
berries, lean as Indians, tough as rawhide. When we figured we were
cured, we pulled out for San Francisco. But we were too previous. By
the second month we both had slight hemorrhages. We flew the coop
back to Arizona and the sheep. Two years more of it. That fixed us.
Perfect cure. All her family's dead. Wouldn't listen to us.
"Then we jumped cities for keeps. Knocked around on the Pacific coast
and southern Oregon looked good to us. We settled in the Rogue River
Valley--apples. There's a big future there, only nobody knows it. I
got my land--on time, of course--for forty an acre. Ten years from
now it'll be worth five hundred.
"We've done some almighty hustling. Takes money, and we hadn't a cent
to start with, you know--had to build a house and barn, get horses and
plows, and all the rest. She taught school two years. Then the boy
came. But we've got it. You ought to see those trees we planted--a
hundred acres of them, almost mature now. But it's all been outgo,
and the mortgage working overtime. That's why I'm here. She'd 'a'
come along only for the kids and the trees. She's handlin' that end,
and here I am, a gosh-danged expensive millionaire--in prospect."
He looked happily across the sun-dazzle on the ice to the green water
of the lake along the farther shore, took a final look at the
photograph, and murmured:
"She's some woman, that. She's hung on. She just wouldn't die,
though she was pretty close to skin and bone all wrapped around a bit
of fire when she went out with the sheep. Oh, she's thin now. Never
will be fat. But it's the prettiest thinness I ever saw, and when I
get back, and the trees begin to bear, and the kids get going to
school, she and I are going to do Paris. I don't think much of that
burg, but she's just hankered for it all her life."
"Well, here's the gold that will take you to Paris," Smoke assured
him. "All we've got to do is to get our hands on it."
Carson nodded with glistening eyes. "Say--that farm of ours is the
prettiest piece of orchard land on all the Pacific coast. Good
climate, too. Our lungs will never get touched again there.
Ex-lungers have to be almighty careful, you know. If you're thinking
of settling, well, just take a peep in at our valley before you
settle, that's all. And fishing! Say!--did you ever get a
thirty-five-pound salmon on a six-ounce rod? Some fight, bo', some
fight!"
"I'm lighter than you by forty pounds," Carson said. "Let me go
first."
They stood on the edge of the crevasse. It was enormous and ancient,
fully a hundred feet across, with sloping, age-eaten sides instead of
sharp-angled rims. At this one place it was bridged by a huge mass of
pressure-hardened snow that was itself half ice. Even the bottom of
this mass they could not see, much less the bottom of the crevasse.
Crumbling and melting, the bridge threatened imminent collapse. There
were signs where recent portions had broken away, and even as they
studied it a mass of half a ton dislodged and fell.
"Looks pretty bad," Carson admitted with an ominous head-shake. "And
it looks much worse than if I wasn't a millionaire."
"But we've got to tackle it," Smoke said. "We're almost across. We
can't go back. We can't camp here on the ice all night. And there's
no other way. Shorty and I explored for a mile up. It was in better
shape, though, when we crossed."
"It's one at a time, and me first." Carson took the part coil of rope
from Smoke's hand. "You'll have to cast off. I'll take the rope and
the pick. Gimme your hand so I can slip down easy."
Slowly and carefully he lowered himself the several feet to the
bridge, where he stood, making final adjustments for the perilous
traverse. On his back was his pack outfit. Around his neck, resting
on his shoulders, he coiled the rope, one end of which was still fast
to his waist.
"I'd give a mighty good part of my millions right now for a
bridge-construction gang," he said, but his cheery, whimsical smile
belied the words. Also, he added, "It's all right; I'm a cat."
The pick, and the long stick he used as an alpenstock, he balanced
horizontally after the manner of a rope-walker. He thrust one foot
forward tentatively, drew it back, and steeled himself with a visible,
physical effort.
"I wish I was flat broke," he smiled up. "If ever I get out of being
a millionaire this time, I'll never be one again. It's too
uncomfortable."
"It's all right," Smoke encouraged. "I've been over it before.
Better let me try it first."
"And you forty pounds to the worse," the little man flashed back.
"I'll be all right in a minute. I'm all right now." And this time
the nerving-up process was instantaneous. "Well, here goes for Rogue
River and the apples," he said, as his foot went out, this time to
rest carefully and lightly while the other foot was brought up and
past. Very gently and circumspectly he continued on his way until
two-thirds of the distance was covered. Here he stopped to examine a
depression he must cross, at the bottom of which was a fresh crack.
Smoke, watching, saw him glance to the side and down into the crevasse
itself, and then begin a slight swaying.
"Keep your eyes up!" Smoke commanded sharply. "Now! Go on!"
The little man obeyed, nor faltered on the rest of the journey. The
sun-eroded slope of the farther edge of the crevasse was slippery, but
not steep, and he worked his way up to a narrow ledge, faced about,
and sat down.
"Your turn," he called across. "But just keep a-coming and don't look
down. That's what got my goat. Just keep a-coming, that's all. And
get a move on. It's almighty rotten."
Balancing his own stick horizontally, Smoke essayed the passage. That
the bridge was on its last legs was patent. He felt a jar under foot,
a slight movement of the mass, and a heavier jar. This was followed
by a single sharp crackle. Behind him he knew something was
happening. If for no other reason, he knew it by the strained, tense
face of Carson. From beneath, thin and faint, came the murmur of
running water, and Smoke's eyes involuntarily wavered to a glimpse of
the shimmering depths. He jerked them back to the way before him.
Two-thirds over, he came to the depression. The sharp edges of the
crack, but slightly touched by the sun, showed how recent it was. His
foot was lifted to make the step across, when the crack began slowly
widening, at the same time emitting numerous sharp snaps. He made the
step quickly, increasing the stride of it, but the worn nails of his
shoe skated on the farther slope of the depression. He fell on his
face, and without pause slipped down and into the crack, his legs
hanging clear, his chest supported by the stick which he had managed
to twist crosswise as he fell.
His first sensation was the nausea caused by the sickening up-leap of
his pulse; his first idea was of surprise that he had fallen no
farther. Behind him was crackling and jar and movement to which the
stick vibrated. From beneath, in the heart of the glacier, came the
soft and hollow thunder of the dislodged masses striking bottom. And
still the bridge, broken from its farthest support and ruptured in the
middle, held, though the portion he had crossed tilted downward at a
pitch of twenty degrees. He could see Carson, perched on his ledge,
his feet braced against the melting surface, swiftly recoiling the
rope from his shoulders to his hand.
"Wait!" he cried. "Don't move, or the whole shooting-match will come
down."
He calculated the distance with a quick glance, took the bandana from
his neck and tied it to the rope, and increased the length by a second
bandana from his pocket. The rope, manufactured from sled-lashings
and short lengths of plaited rawhide knotted together, was both light
and strong. The first cast was lucky as well as deft, and Smoke's
fingers clutched it. He evidenced a hand-over-hand intention of
crawling out of the crack. But Carson, who had refastened the rope
around his own waist, stopped him.
"Make it fast around yourself as well," he ordered.
"If I go I'll take you with me," Smoke objected.
The little man became very peremptory.
"You shut up," he ordered. "The sound of your voice is enough to
start the whole thing going."
"If I ever start going--" Smoke began.
"Shut up! You ain't going to ever start going. Now do what I say.
That's right--under the shoulders. Make it fast. Now! Start! Get a
move on, but easy as you go. I'll take in the slack. You just keep
a-coming. That's it. Easy. Easy."
Smoke was still a dozen feet away when the final collapse of the
bridge began. Without noise, but in a jerky way, it crumbled to an
increasing tilt.
"Quick!" Carson called, coiling in hand-over-hand on the slack of the
rope which Smoke's rush gave him.
When the crash came, Smoke's fingers were clawing into the hard face
of the wall of the crevasse, while his body dragged back with the
falling bridge. Carson, sitting up, feet wide apart and braced, was
heaving on the rope. This effort swung Smoke in to the side wall, but
it jerked Carson out of his niche. Like a cat, he faced about,
clawing wildly for a hold on the ice and slipping down. Beneath him,
with forty feet of taut rope between them, Smoke was clawing just as
wildly; and ere the thunder from below announced the arrival of the
bridge, both men had come to rest. Carson had achieved this first,
and the several pounds of pull he was able to put on the rope had
helped bring Smoke to a stop.
Each lay in a shallow niche, but Smoke's was so shallow that, tense
with the strain of flattening and sticking, nevertheless he would have
slid on had it not been for the slight assistance he took from the
rope. He was on the verge of a bulge and could not see beneath him.
Several minutes passed, in which they took stock of the situation and
made rapid strides in learning the art of sticking to wet and slippery
ice. The little man was the first to speak.
"Gee!" he said; and, a minute later, "If you can dig in for a moment
and slack on the rope, I can turn over. Try it."
Smoke made the effort, then rested on the rope again. "I can do it,"
he said. "Tell me when you're ready. And be quick."
"About three feet down is holding for my heels," Carson said. "It
won't take a moment. Are you ready?"
"Go on."
It was hard work to slide down a yard, turn over and sit up; but it
was even harder for Smoke to remain flattened and maintain a position
that from instant to instant made a greater call upon his muscles. As
it was, he could feel the almost perceptible beginning of the slip
when the rope tightened and he looked up into his companion's face.
Smoke noted the yellow pallor of sun-tan forsaken by the blood, and
wondered what his own complexion was like. But when he saw Carson,
with shaking fingers, fumble for his sheath-knife, he decided the end
had come. The man was in a funk and was going to cut the rope.
"Don't m-mind m-m-me," the little man chattered. "I ain't scared.
It's only my nerves, gosh-dang them. I'll b-b-be all right in a
minute."
And Smoke watched him, doubled over, his shoulders between his knees,
shivering and awkward, holding a slight tension on the rope with one
hand while with the other he hacked and gouged holes for his heels in
the ice.
"Carson," he breathed up to him, "you're some bear, some bear."
The answering grin was ghastly and pathetic. "I never could stand
height," Carson confessed. "It always did get me. Do you mind if I
stop a minute and clear my head? Then I'll make those heel-holds
deeper so I can heave you up."
Smoke's heart warmed. "Look here, Carson. The thing for you to do is
to cut the rope. You can never get me up, and there's no use both of
us being lost. You can make it out with your knife."
"You shut up!" was the hurt retort. "Who's running this?"
And Smoke could not help but see that anger was a good restorative for
the other's nerves. As for himself, it was the more nerve-racking
strain, lying plastered against the ice with nothing to do but strive
to stick on.
A groan and a quick cry of "Hold on!" warned him. With face pressed
against the ice, he made a supreme sticking effort, felt the rope
slacken, and knew Carson was slipping toward him. He did not dare
look up until he felt the rope tighten and knew the other had again
come to rest.
"Gee, that was a near go," Carson chattered. "I came down over a
yard. Now you wait. I've got to dig new holds. If this danged ice
wasn't so melty we'd be hunky-dory."
Holding the few pounds of strain necessary for Smoke with his left
hand, the little man jabbed and chopped at the ice with his right.
Ten minutes of this passed.
"Now, I'll tell you what I've done," Carson called down. "I've made
heel-holds and hand-holes for you alongside of me. I'm going to heave
the rope in slow and easy, and you just come along sticking an' not
too fast. I'll tell you what, first of all. I'll take you on the
rope and you worry out of that pack. Get me?"
Smoke nodded, and with infinite care unbuckled his pack-straps. With
a wriggle of the shoulders he dislodged the pack, and Carson saw it
slide over the bulge and out of sight.
"Now, I'm going to ditch mine," he called down. "You just take it
easy and wait."
Five minutes later the upward struggle began. Smoke, after drying his
hands on the insides of his arm-sleeves, clawed into the
climb--bellied, and clung, and stuck, and plastered--sustained and
helped by the pull of the rope. Alone, he could not have advanced.
Despite his muscles, because of his forty pounds' handicap, he could
not cling as did Carson. A third of the way up, where the pitch was
steeper and the ice less eroded, he felt the strain on the rope
decreasing. He moved slower and slower. Here was no place to stop
and remain. His most desperate effort could not prevent the stop, and
he could feel the down-slip beginning.
"I'm going," he called up.
"So am I," was the reply, gritted through Carson's teeth.
"Then cast loose."
Smoke felt the rope tauten in a futile effort, then the pace
quickened, and as he went past his previous lodgment and over the
bulge the last glimpse he caught of Carson he was turned over, with
madly moving hands and feet striving to overcome the downward draw.
To Smoke's surprise, as he went over the bulge, there was no sheer
fall. The rope restrained him as he slid down a steeper pitch, which
quickly eased until he came to a halt in another niche on the verge of
another bulge. Carson was now out of sight, ensconced in the place
previously occupied by Smoke.
"Gee!" he could hear Carson shiver. "Gee!"
An interval of quiet followed, and then Smoke could feel the rope
agitated.
"What are you doing?" he called up.
"Making more hand- and foot-holds," came the trembling answer. "You
just wait. I'll have you up here in a jiffy. Don't mind the way I
talk. I'm just excited. But I'm all right. You wait and see."
"You're holding me by main strength," Smoke argued. "Soon or late,
with the ice melting, you'll slip down after me. The thing for you to
do is to cut loose. Hear me! There's no use both of us going. Get
that? You're the biggest little man in creation, but you've done your
best. You cut loose."
"You shut up. I'm going to make holes this time deep enough to haul
up a span of horses."
"You've held me up long enough," Smoke urged. "Let me go."
"How many times have I held you up?" came the truculent query.
"Some several, and all of them too many. You've been coming down all
the time."
"And I've been learning the game all the time. I'm going on holding
you up until we get out of here. Savvy? When God made me a
light-weight I guess he knew what he was about. Now, shut up. I'm
busy."
Several silent minutes passed. Smoke could hear the metallic strike
and hack of the knife and occasional driblets of ice slid over the
bulge and came down to him. Thirsty, clinging on hand and foot, he
caught the fragments in his mouth and melted them to water, which he
swallowed.
He heard a gasp that slid into a groan of despair, and felt a
slackening of the rope that made him claw. Immediately the rope
tightened again. Straining his eyes in an upward look along the steep
slope, he stared a moment, then saw the knife, point first, slide over
the verge of the bulge and down upon him. He tucked his cheek to it,
shrank from the pang of cut flesh, tucked more tightly, and felt the
knife come to rest.
"I'm a slob," came the wail down the crevasse.
"Cheer up, I've got it," Smoke answered.
"Say! Wait! I've a lot of string in my pocket. I'll drop it down to
you, and you send the knife up."
Smoke made no reply. He was battling with a sudden rush of thought.
"Hey! You! Here comes the string. Tell me when you've got it."
A small pocket-knife, weighted on the end of the string, slid down the
ice. Smoke got it, opened the larger blade by a quick effort of his
teeth and one hand, and made sure that the blade was sharp. Then he
tied the sheath-knife to the end of the string.
"Haul away!" he called.
With strained eyes he saw the upward progress of the knife. But he
saw more--a little man, afraid and indomitable, who shivered and
chattered, whose head swam with giddiness, and who mastered his qualms
and distresses and played a hero's part. Not since his meeting with
Shorty had Smoke so quickly liked a man. Here was a proper
meat-eater, eager with friendliness, generous to destruction, with a
grit that shaking fear could not shake. Then, too, he considered the
situation cold-bloodedly. There was no chance for two. Steadily,
they were sliding into the heart of the glacier, and it was his
greater weight that was dragging the little man down. The little man
could stick like a fly. Alone, he could save himself.
"Bully for us!" came the voice from above, down and across the bulge
of ice. "Now we'll get out of here in two shakes."
The awful struggle for good cheer and hope in Carson's voice decided
Smoke.
"Listen to me," he said steadily, vainly striving to shake the vision
of Joy Gastell's face from his brain. "I sent that knife up for you
to get out with. Get that? I'm going to chop loose with the
jack-knife. It's one or both of us. Get that?"
"Two or nothing," came the grim but shaky response. "If you'll hold
on a minute--"
"I've held on for too long now. I'm not married. I have no adorable
thin woman nor kids nor apple-trees waiting for me. Get me? Now, you
hike up and out of that!"
"Wait! For God's sake, wait!" Carson screamed down. "You can't do
that! Give me a chance to get you out. Be calm, old horse. We'll
make the turn. You'll see. I'm going to dig holds that'll lift a
house and barn."
Smoke made no reply. Slowly and gently, fascinated by the sight, he
cut with the knife until one of the three strands popped and parted.
"What are you doing?" Carson cried desperately. "If you cut, I'll
never forgive you--never. I tell you it's two or nothing. We're
going to get out. Wait! For God's sake!"
And Smoke, staring at the parted strand, five inches before his eyes,
knew fear in all its weakness. He did not want to die; he recoiled
from the shimmering abyss beneath him, and his panic brain urged all
the preposterous optimism of delay. It was fear that prompted him to
compromise.
"All right," he called up. "I'll wait. Do your best. But I tell
you, Carson, if we both start slipping again I'm going to cut."
"Huh! Forget it. When we start, old horse, we start up. I'm a
porous plaster. I could stick here if it was twice as steep. I'm
getting a sizable hole for one heel already. Now, you hush, and let
me work."
The slow minutes passed. Smoke centered his soul on the dull hurt of
a hang-nail on one of his fingers. He should have clipped it away
that morning--it was hurting then--he decided; and he resolved, once
clear of the crevasse, that it should immediately be clipped. Then,
with short focus, he stared at the hang-nail and the finger with a new
comprehension. In a minute, or a few minutes at best, that hang-nail,
that finger, cunningly jointed and efficient, might be part of a
mangled carcass at the bottom of the crevasse. Conscious of his fear,
he hated himself. Bear-eaters were made of sterner stuff. In the
anger of self-revolt he all but hacked at the rope with his knife.
But fear made him draw back the hand and to stick himself again,
trembling and sweating, to the slippery slope. To the fact that he
was soaking wet by contact with the thawing ice he tried to attribute
the cause of his shivering; but he knew, in the heart of him, that it
was untrue.
A gasp and a groan and an abrupt slackening of the rope, warned him.
He began to slip. The movement was very slow. The rope tightened
loyally, but he continued to slip. Carson could not hold him, and was
slipping with him. The digging toe of his farther-extended foot
encountered vacancy, and he knew that it was over the straight-away
fall. And he knew, too, that in another moment his falling body would
jerk Carson's after it.
Blindly, desperately, all the vitality and life-love of him beaten
down in a flashing instant by a shuddering perception of right and
wrong, he brought the knife-edge across the rope, saw the strands
part, felt himself slide more rapidly, and then fall.
What happened then, he did not know. He was not unconscious, but it
happened too quickly, and it was unexpected. Instead of falling to
his death, his feet almost immediately struck in water, and he sat
violently down in water that splashed coolingly on his face. His
first impression was that the crevasse was shallower than he had
imagined and that he had safely fetched bottom. But of this he was
quickly disabused. The opposite wall was a dozen feet away. He lay
in a basin formed in an out-jut of the ice-wall by melting water that
dribbled and trickled over the bulge above and fell sheer down a
distance of a dozen feet. This had hollowed out the basin. Where he
sat the water was two feet deep, and it was flush with the rim. He
peered over the rim and looked down the narrow chasm hundreds of feet
to the torrent that foamed along the bottom.
"Oh, why did you?" he heard a wail from above.
"Listen," he called up. "I'm perfectly safe, sitting in a pool of
water up to my neck. And here's both our packs. I'm going to sit on
them. There's room for a half-dozen here. If you slip, stick close
and you'll land. In the meantime you hike up and get out. Go to the
cabin. Somebody's there. I saw the smoke. Get a rope, or anything
that will make rope, and come back and fish for me."
"Honest!" came Carson's incredulous voice.
"Cross my heart and hope to die. Now, get a hustle on, or I'll catch
my death of cold."
Smoke kept himself warm by kicking a channel through the rim with the
heel of his shoe. By the time he had drained off the last of the
water, a faint call from Carson announced that he had reached the top.
After that Smoke occupied himself with drying his clothes. The late
afternoon sun beat warmly in upon him, and he wrung out his garments
and spread them about him. His match-case was water-proof, and he
manipulated and dried sufficient tobacco and rice-paper to make
cigarettes.
Two hours later, perched naked on the two packs and smoking, he heard
a voice above that he could not fail to identify.
"Oh, Smoke! Smoke!"
"Hello, Joy Gastell!" he called back. "Where'd you drop from?"
"Are you hurt?"
"Not even any skin off!"
"Father's paying the rope down now. Do you see it?"
"Yes, and I've got it," he answered. "Now, wait a couple of minutes,
please."
"What's the matter?" came her anxious query, after several minutes.
"Oh, I know, you're hurt."
"No, I'm not. I'm dressing."
"Dressing?"
"Yes. I've been in swimming. Now! Ready? Hoist away!"
He sent up the two packs on the first trip, was consequently rebuked
by Joy Gastell, and on the second trip came up himself.
Joy Gastell looked at him with glowing eyes, while her father and
Carson were busy coiling the rope. "How could you cut loose in that
splendid way?" she cried. "It was--it was glorious, that's all."
Smoke waved the compliment away with a deprecatory hand.
"I know all about it," she persisted. "Carson told me. You
sacrificed yourself to save him."
"Nothing of the sort," Smoke lied. "I could see that swimming-pool
right under me all the time."
