CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE MISERERE OF MOTHERHOOD
The up-train came shrieking out of the last tunnel in Feather RiverCanyon, churned around a curve, struck a hollow roar from the trestlethat bridges the mouth of Toll-Gate creek, shrieked again when it saw,down the white trail of its headlight, the whirling snow that sweptdown the canyon, and churned up the stiff grade that would carry itaround through the Pocket at the head of the canyon and to the littleyellow station just beyond. A fight it would have to top the summit ofthe Sierras and slip down into the desert beyond, but it climbed thegrade with a vicious kind of energy, twisted around the point of thehill where the Crystal Lake trail crossed and climbed higher, and witha last scream at the station lights it slewed past the curve, clickedover a switch or two and stood panting there in the storm, waiting tosee whether it might go on and get the ordeal over with at once, orwhether it must wait until the down train passed.
A thin, yellow slip ordered it to wait, since it was ten minutesbehind time. The down train was just then screaming into Spring Gardenand would come straight on. So the up train stood there puffing likethe giant thing it was, while the funny little train from Quincyfussed back upon a different siding and tried its best to puff as loudas its big, important neighbor while it waited, too, for the downtrain.
Two men and a woman plowed through the wind and the snow and mountedwearily the steps of the little coach which comprised the branchline's passenger service. The two men took it all as a matter ofcourse--the bare little coach with plush seats and an air of transientdiscomfort. They were used to it, and they did not mind.
The woman, however, halted inside the door and glanced around her withincredulous disdain. She seemed upon the point of refusing to ride inso crude a conveyance; seemed about to complain to the conductor andto demand something better. She went forward under protest and drewher gloved fingers across the plush back of a seat, looked at herfingers and said, "Hmh!" as though her worst fears were confirmed. Shelooked at one of the men and spoke as she would speak to a servant.
"Is there no other coach on this train?"
"No, ma'am!" the man said, accenting the first word as though hewished to prevent argument. "It's this or walk."
"Hmh!" said the lady, and spread a discarded newspaper upon the seat,and sat down. "Thank you," she added perfunctorily, and looked out ofthe window at what she could see of the storm.
The down train thundered in, just then, and with a squealing of brakesstopped so that its chair car blotted her dismal view of the closehillside. Between the two trains the snow sifted continuously, comingout of the gray wall above, falling into the black shadows beneath.Two or three bundled passengers with snow packed in the wrinkles oftheir clothing went down the aisle of the chair-car, looking forseats.
It was all very depressing, wearisome in the extreme. The lady settledherself deeper into her furs and sighed.
She continued to sigh at intervals during the remainder of the trip.The last and the heaviest sigh of all she heaved when she settled downto sleep in a hotel bedroom and thought miserably of a certainlovable, if somewhat headstrong, young man who was out somewhere inthese terrible mountains in the storm, hiding away from the world andperhaps suffering cold and hunger.
Thoughts of that kind are not the best medicine for sleeplessness, andit was long after midnight before Mrs. Singleton Corey driftedinsensibly from heartsick reflections into the inconsequent imaginingsof dreams. She did not dream about Jack, which was some comfort;instead, she dreamed that she was presiding over a meeting of herfavorite club.
She awoke to the chill of an unheated room during a winter storm. Thequiet lulled her at first into the belief that it was yet very early,but sounds of clashing dishes in a pan somewhere in a room beneath herseemed to indicate breakfast. She would have telephoned down for herbreakfast to be served in her room, but there was no telephone or callbell in sight. She therefore dressed shiveringly and groped throughnarrow hallways until she found the stairs. The mournful _whoo-ooing_of the wind outside gripped at her heartstrings. Jack was outsomewhere in this, hiding in a cave. She shivered again.
In the dining room, where two belated breakfasters hurried throughtheir meal, Mrs. Singleton Corey tried to pull herself together; triedto shut out sentiment from her mind, that she might the better meetand handle practical emergencies. It would not do, of course, toannounce her motive in coming here. She would have to find this MissHumphrey first of all. She unfolded her napkin, laid it across her lapand waited.
"They can't do much till this storm lets up," a man at the next tableobserved to his companion. "Uh course, I s'pose they'll make somekinda bluff at trying--but believe me, these hills is no snap in asnowstorm, and don't I know it! I got caught out, once,--and I like toof stayed out. No, sir--"
"How's the trains, Barney?" the other called to a man who had justcome in from the office.
"Trains! Ain't any trains, and there won't be. There's four slidesbetween here and Keddie--Lord knows how many there is from there ondown. Wires are all down, so they can't get any word. Nothing movingthe other, way, either. It's the rain coming first, that softenedthings up, and then the weight of the snow pulled things loose. Takeyour time about your breakfast," he grinned. "You'll have quite aboard bill before you get away from here."
"Anybody starting out to hunt that girl?" the first speaker asked him."Can't do much till the storm lets up, can they?"
"Well, if they wait till the storm lets up," Barney retorted drily,"they might just as well wait till spring. What kinda folks do youthink we are, around here? Forest Service started a bunch out already.Bill Dunevant, he's getting another party made up."
"It's a fright," the second man declared, "I don't know a darn thingabout these mountains, but if somebody'll stake me to a horse, I'llgo and do what I can."
"When was it they brought word?"
"Fellow got down to the station about an hour ago and phoned in, isthe way I heard it," Barney said. "He had to wait till the officeopened up."
Mrs. Singleton Corey laid her unused napkin on the table beside herunused knife and fork, and rose from her chair. She had a feeling thatthis matter concerned her, and that she did not want to hear thosecrude men pulling her trouble into their talk. With composedobliviousness to her surroundings she walked out into the office,quite ignoring the astonishment of the waitress who held Mrs.Singleton Corey's butter and two biscuits in her hands by the table.She waited, just within the office, until the man Barney sensed herimpatience and returned from the dining room.
"I should like to go to a place called Toll-Gate cabin," she told himcalmly. "Can you arrange for a conveyance of some kind? I see that anautomobile is out of the question, probably, with so much snow on theground. I should like to start as soon as possible."
The man looked at her with a startled expression. "Why, I don't know.No, ma'am, I'm afraid a rig couldn't make it in this storm. It'shalfway up the mountain--do you happen to know the young lady that waslost up there, yesterday?"
"Has a young lady been lost up there?" The eyes of Mrs. SingletonCorey dwelt upon him compellingly.
"Yes, ma'am, since yesterday forenoon. We just got word of it a whileago. They're sending out searching parties now. She was staying atToll-Gate--"
"Is Toll-Gate a town?"
"No, ma'am. Toll-Gate is just the name of a creek. There's a cabinthere, and they call it Toll-Gate cabin. The girl stayed there."
"Ah. Can you have some sort of conveyance--"
"Only conveyance I could promise is a saddle horse, and that won't bevery pleasant, either. Besides, it's dangerous to go into the woods, aday like this. I don't believe you better try it till the weatherclears. It ain't anything a lady had ought to tackle--unless maybe itwas a matter of life and death." He looked at her dubiously.
Mrs. Singleton Corey pressed her lips together. Any recalcitrant clubmember, or her son, could have told him then that surrender was theonly recourse left to him.
"Please tell your sear
ching party that I shall go with them. Have asaddle horse brought for me, if you can find nothing better. I shallbe ready in half an hour. Tell one of the maids to bring me coffee, asoft-boiled egg and buttered toast to my room." She turned and wentup the stairs unhurriedly, as goes one who knows that commands will beobeyed. She did not look back, or betray the slightest uneasiness, andBarney, watching her slack-jawed until she had reached the top, pulledon a cap and went off to do her bidding.
Mrs. Singleton Corey was not the woman to let small things impede hercalm progress toward a certain goal. She proved that beyond all doubtwhen she ordered a saddle horse, for she had last ridden upon the backof a horse when she was about fourteen years old. She had a vaguenotion that all horses nowadays were trained from their colthood tobuck--whatever that was. Rodeo posters and such printed matter uponthe subject as her eye could not escape had taught her that much, butshe refused to be dismayed. Moreover, she was aware that it wouldprobably be necessary for her to ride astride, as all women seemed toride nowadays: yet she did not falter.
From her beautifully fitted traveling bag she produced a pair ofivory-handled manicure scissors, lifted her three-hundred-dollarfur-lined coat from a hook behind the door and proceeded deliberatelyto ruin both scissors and coat by slitting the back of the coat upnearly to the waist-line, so that she could wear it comfortably onhorseback. Her black broadcloth skirt was in imminent danger of thesame surgical revision when a shocked young waitress with thebreakfast tray in her hands uttered shrill protest.
"Oh, don't go and ruin your skirt that way! They've got you afour-horse team and sleigh, Mrs. Corey. Mercy, ain't it awful aboutthat poor girl being lost? Excuse me--are you her mother, Mrs. Corey?"
Mrs. Singleton Corey, sitting now upon the bed, lifted her aloofglance from the mutilated coat. "Set the things on the chair, there,since there is no table. I do not know the girl at all." And sheadded, since it seemed necessary to make oneself very plain to thesepeople: "I think that will be all, thank you." She even went a stepfarther and gave the girl a tip, which settled all further overturestoward conversation.
The girl went off and cried, and called Mrs. Singleton Corey astuck-up old hen who would freeze--and serve her right. She even hopedthat Mrs. Singleton Corey would get stuck in a snowdrift and have towalk every step of the way to Toll-Gate. Leaving her breakfast when itwas all on the table, just as if it would hurt her to eat in the sameroom with people, and then acting like that to a person! She wishedshe had let the old catamaran spoil her skirt; and so on.
Mrs. Singleton Corey never troubled herself over the impression shemade upon the servant class. She regretted the publicity that seemedto have been given her arrival and her further journey into thehills. It annoyed her to have the girl calling her Mrs. Corey soeasily; it seemed to imply an intimate acquaintance with her errandwhich was disquieting in the extreme. Was it possible that theHumphrey woman had been talking to outsiders? Or had the police reallygotten upon the trail of Jack?
She hurried into her warmest things, drank the coffee because it wouldstimulate her for the terrible journey ahead of her, and went down tofind the four-horse team waiting outside, tails whipping betweenshivering hind legs, hips drawn down as for a lunge forward, headstossing impatiently. The red-faced driver was bundled to his eyes anddid not say a word while he tucked the robes snugly down around herfeet.
The snow was driving up the street in a steady wind, but Mrs.Singleton Corey faced it undauntedly. She saw the white-veiled plazaupon one side, the row of little stores huddled behind bare trees uponthe other side. It seemed a neat little town, a curiously placidlittle town to be so buffeted by the storm. Behind it the mountainloomed, a dark blur in the gray-white world. Beautiful, yes; but Mrs.Singleton Corey was not looking for beauty that day. She was a mother,and she was looking for her boy.
Two men, with two long-handled shovels, ran out from a little storehalfway down the street and, still running, threw themselves into theback of the sleigh.
"Better go back and get another shovel," the driver advised them,pulling up. "I forgot mine. Anything they want me to haul up? Where'sthem blankets? And say, Hank, you better go into the drugstore and geta bottle of the best liquor they've got. Brandy."
"I've got a bottle of rye," the man standing behind Mrs. SingletonCorey volunteered. "Stop at the Forest Service, will you? They've gotthe blankets there. We can get another shovel from them."
The driver spoke to his leaders, and they went on, trotting brisklyinto the wind. Blurred outlines of cottages showed upon either hand.Before one of these they stopped, and a young man came out with a rollof canvas-covered bedding balanced upon his bent shoulders. Hankclimbed down, went in and got a shovel.
"Ain't heard anything more?" questioned the driver, in the tone oneinvoluntarily gives to tragedy.
The young man dumped his burden into the back of the sleigh and shookhis head. "Our men are going to stay up there till they find her," hesaid. "There's a sack of grub I wish you'd take along."
He glanced at Mrs. Singleton Corey, whose dark eyes were staring athim through her veil, and ran back into the house. Running so, withhis back turned, his body had a swing like Jack's, and her throatached with a sudden impulse toward weeping.
He was back in a minute with a knobby sack of something very heavy,that rattled dully when he threw it in. "All right," he called. "Hopeyuh make it, all right."
"Sure, we'll make it! May have to shovel some--"
Again they started, and there were no more stops. They swung down astraight bit of road where the wind swept bitterly and the hills haddrawn back farther into the blur. They drew near to one that slowlydisclosed snow-matted pine trees upon a hillside; skirted this andploughed along its foot for half a mile or so and then turned outagain into a broad, level valley. Now the mountains were more thanever blurred and indistinct, receding into the distance.
"Do we not go into the mountains?" Mrs. Singleton Corey laid aside heraloofness to ask, when the valley seemed to stretch endlessly beforethem.
"Sure. We'll strike 'em pretty soon now. Looks a long ways, on accountof the storm. You any relation to the girl that's lost?"
"I do not know her at all." But trouble was slowly thawing thehumanity in Mrs. Singleton Corey, and she softened the rebuff alittle. "It must be a terrible thing to be lost in these mountains."
"Far as I'm concerned," spoke up Hank from behind them, 'they'reeither two of 'em lost, or there ain't anybody lost. I've got itfigured that either she's at the camp of that feller that's stayin' upthere somewheres around Taylor Rock, or else the feller's lost too.I'll bet they're together, wherever they be."
"What feller's that, Hank?" the driver twisted his head in his muffledcollar.
"Feller that had the lookout on Mount Hough las' summer. He's hidin'out up there somewheres. Him an' the girl used to meet--I know thatfer sure. Uh course I ain't sayin' anything--but they's two lost ernone, you take it from me."
The driver grunted and seemed to meditate upon the matter. "What didthat perfessor wade clear down to Marston through the storm for, andreport her lost, if she ain't lost?"
"He come down to see if she'd took the train las' night. That's whathe come for. She'd went off somewheres before noon, and didn't show upno more. He didn't think she was lost, till Morton told him she hadn'tshowed up to take no train. That's when the perfessor got scared andphoned in."
The driver grunted again, and called upon his leaders to shake aleg--they'd have walking enough and plenty when they hit the hill, hesaid. Again they neared the valley's rim, so that pine trees withevery branch sagging under its load of snow, fringed the background.Like a pastel of a storm among hills that she had at home, thoughtMrs. Singleton Corey irrelevantly. But was it Jack whom the man calledHank referred to? The thought chilled her.
"What's he hidin' out for, Hank? Funny I never heard anything aboutit." The driver spoke after another season of cogitation, and Mrs.Singleton Corey was grateful to him for seeking the information sheneeded.
"Well, I dunno what _fur_, but it stands to reason he's on the dodge.All summer long he never showed up in Quincy when he was relieved.Stayed out in the hills--and that ain't natural for a young cityfeller, is it? 'N' then he was ornery as sin. Got so't I wouldn't packgrub up to him no more. I couldn't go 'im, the way he acted when afeller come around. 'N' then when they closed up the station, he madecamp up there somewheres around Taylor Rock, and he ain't never showedhis nose in town. If I knowed what _fur_, I might 'a' did somethingabout it. They's a nigger in the woodpile somewheres, you take it fromme."
"Well, but that ain't got anything to do with the girl," the drivercontested stubbornly. "I know her--she's a mighty fine girl, too; andgood-looking as they make 'em. I hauled their stuff up lastsummer--and them, too. They seem like nice enough folks, all of 'em.And I saw her pretty near every time I hauled tourists up to thelake."
Hank chuckled to himself. "Well, I guess I know 'er, too, mebby alittle better'n what you do. I ain't saying anything ag'inst the girl.I say she was in the habit of meeting this feller--Johnny Carew's thename he went by--meetin' him out around different places. They knowedeach other, that's what I'm sayin'. And the way I figure, she'd wentout to meet him, and either the two of 'em's lost, er else they'reboth storm-stayed up at his camp. She's mebby home by this time. Ilook for 'er to be, myself."
"You do, hey?" The driver twisted his head again to look back at Hank."What yuh going up to help hunt her for, then?"
"Me, I'm just goin' fur the ride," Hank grinned.
They overtook Murphy, plodding along in the horse-trampled, deep snow,with a big, black hat pulled down to his ears, an empty gunny sackover his shoulders like a cape, a quart bottle sticking out of eachcoat pocket. They took him into the sleigh and went on, throughanother half mile of lane.
After that they began abruptly to climb through pine forest. In alittle they crossed the railroad at the end of a cut through themountain's great toe. Dismal enough it looked under its heavy blanketof snow that lay smoothly over ties and rails, the telegraph wiressagging, white ropes of snow. Mrs. Singleton Corey glanced down thedesolate length of it and shivered.
After that the four horses straightened their backs to steady,laborious climbing up a narrow road arched over with naked oak treesset amongst pines. Here, too, the deep snow was trampled with thepassing of horses--the searching party, she knew without being told.The driver spoke to the two behind him, after a ten-minute silenceagainst the heavy background of roaring overhead.
"Know that first turn, up ahead here? If we don't have to shovelthrough, we'll be lucky."
From the back of the sleigh where he was sitting flat, Murphy spokesuddenly. "A-ah, an' av ye don't have to saw yer trail through a downtree, ye'll be luckier sthill, I dunno. An' it's likely there ain't asaw in the hull outfit!" He spat into the storm and added grimly, "An'how ye're to git the shled around a three-fut tree, I dunno."
"Sure takes you to think up bad luck, Murph," Hank retorted. "We ain'tstruck any down timber so fur."
"An' ye ain't there yet, neither--not be four mile ye ain't."
Mrs. Singleton Corey, wrapped in her furs, with snow packing fullevery fold and wrinkle of her clothing left uncovered by the robe, didnot hear the aimless argument that followed between Hank and Murphy.The sonorous _shwoo-oosh_ of the wind-tormented pine tops surgedthrough the very soul of her, the diapason accompaniment to themiserere of motherhood. Somewhere on this wild mountainside was Jack,huddled from the wind in a cave, or wandering miserably through thestorm. Wrapped in soft luxury all her life, Mrs. Singleton Coreyshuddered as she looked forth through her silken veil, and saw whatJack was enduring because she had never taught her son to love her;because she had not taught him the lessons of love and trust andobedience.
Of the girl who was lost she scarcely thought. Jack was out here inthe cold and the snow and the roaring wind; homeless because she haddriven him forth with her coldness; friendless because she had notgiven him the precious friendship of a mother. Her own son, fearinghis mother so much that he was hiding away from her among theseterrible, mourning, roaring forests! Behind her veil, her delicatelypowdered cheeks showed moist lines where the tears of hungrymotherhood slid swiftly down from eyes as brown as Jack's and asdirect in their gaze, but blurred now and filled with a terribleyearning.