XXII
THE BLIZZARD
Garth had no conscious design in running; his muscles merely reacted inobedience to the grinding tumult in his brain. His eardrums rang with thefancied sound of Natalie's cries; and his eyeballs were seared with thepicture of her shrinking in the brutal hands of Grylls. As he crashedthrough the wood, the little branches whipped his face unmercifully; andthe spiny shoots of the jackpines tore his clothes. He ran full tilt intounyielding obstacles; and was flung aside, unconscious of the shock.
He instinctively sought the other camp. He found it deserted; the tentgone; the door of the empty cabin swinging idly in the wind. He came toa stop then; and his arms dropped to his sides: without knowledge of thedirection they had taken; and without the craft to follow their tracksin the grass, in his helplessness he hovered on the brink of sheermadness. He was sharply called back to himself by the sound of a faintgroan from the edge of the cut-bank. A tinge of gray had by this timebeen woven into the unrelieved blackness. Running toward the sound, hefound a human form prone in the grass; and he saw it was a woman lyingon her face. Grasping her shoulders, he rolled her over. It was Rina.
A tiny hope sprang in his breast. Here at last was a clue.
"Get up!" he said roughly.
She made no answer. From her limpness, and her cold, moist hands, Garthapprehended that she was physically sick. Partly raising her, he pouredpart of the contents of his flask down her throat. She choked, andturned her head away.
"Let me be!" she murmured. "Let me die!"
The wildness in Garth's veins subsided. Here he had something tangibleto work upon; and his conscious brain resumed operations; prompting himat first like a small, strange voice at an immense distance.
"Tell me what happened!" he said hoarsely. "If they have wronged you,too, help me to find them, and we'll pay them off together!"
"No! I want die!" whispered Rina in a voice as dull and hopeless as thesound of all-day rain in the grass. "I say I kill myself. He laugh. Hesee me tak' bad medicine. He don' care. I fall down. He leave me. It'ink I die then. I ver' glad. But I tak' too much; and it only mak' mystomach sick. Bam-by I try to go to lake and jomp in--but my head gooff!"
In spite of her unwillingness, Garth forced more of the stimulant downher throat. Presently she was able to sit up. She bowed her back, andburied her face in her crossed arms.
"Ride with me after them!" urged Garth. "They have less than an hour'sstart! We will overtake them at their first camp. Rouse yourself!"
But Rina only shook her head; and continued to murmur: "He want me die!He glad I die!"
Garth's desperate need brought craft to his aid. "Very well," he saidcoolly. "I shoot him on sight! Mabyn goes first!"
Rina, touched home, raised an agitated face. "No! No!" she saidtremblingly. "Grylls, him took her--not 'Erbe't!"
"No matter!" he said, feigning to leave her. "Mabyn dies like adog--unless you come with me."
Rina struggled to her knees, and clutched at him. "Wait a minute!" shestammered.
"Come with me, and I promise you his life, if I can save it," he urged."I will give it to you!"
She attempted to rise; and he lifted her. She stood swaying dizzily,clinging to his arm for support.
"I come," she said faintly at last. "Tak' me to the water, then go getyour horses. When you come back I ride with you."
She stopped in the cabin, and got an herb she knew of to restore her.Garth then carried her down the hill, and laying her at the brink of thewater, where she could drink and bathe her face, he hastened back to hisown shack.
It was now light enough to see a way through the wood. A spectral misthung suspended a few feet over the lake; beneath it the water was like asteel cuirass, reflecting bordering foliage as black as jet. Charley hadgone for the horses as a matter of course and was even now landing them.The boy's whilom rosy cheeks were as white as the mist; and his face wastwisted with pain. His jaw was set doggedly; and he worked ahead withoutquestion or comment.
No orders were required; they laboured instinctively. Saddles werecarried out, and flung on the dripping beasts; and while Charley girthedthem, Garth rolled the blankets, and made three bundles of grub, asheavy as he dared ask each horse to carry, in addition to his rider.Natalie's little rifle he gave to Charley; the second Winchester hadbeen won back in the raid, and the twenty-two was the only other weaponthey possessed. In twenty minutes they were ready. Securing the door ofthe hut against the entrance of animals, they hastened to pick up Rina.
They found her waiting, outwardly collected; her old walled, sullenself--but in the early light her skin showed a deathly, yellowish gray.Refusing any assistance, she climbed into the empty saddle withoutcomment; and mutely pointed the way over the hills to the west. Garthlingered to affix a note to the door of the shack for those theyexpected to follow.
As he caught up to them again, he overlooked his little party with theeye of a commander. It was not a hopeful view: three wretched, half-fedbeasts he had, complaining at the very start under their loads; and forhis aids an injured boy and a sick girl; with one first-class weapon anda toy among the three of them. This was all he had with which to meetand overcome Grylls's strong and well-provided party. The odds were sopreposterous, he put the thought out of his head with a shrug. At thelast there is a moment when the hard-pressed commander must wall up hisbrain; and let the tide of his blood carry him. The daylight revealedGarth's face gaunt and sunken; his lips a grim stroke of red; and hiseyes contracted to two icy points.
As they climbed the hill Rina said: "They got fourteen horse. NickGrylls bring nine, three yours, and two cayuse 'Erbe't's."
At the top she halted them, while she walked her horse back and forth,searching the grass. Garth's eyes meanwhile swept the wide, brown,undulating sea, seeking in the hollows and the coppices for any sign ofmotion. But the plain was as empty of life as the gray sky.
Rina rejoined him. "They break up so we can't see them so good," shesaid in her indifferent way. "Seven horse go by the edge of the coulee,southwest. Five horse go west. Two horse go northwest. Bam-by I t'inkthey come together."
"What horse was _she_ on?" Garth demanded.
"Nick Grylls's big roan," she answered. "They mak' a bag for her to sitin. She sit one side; Mary Co-que-wasa sit the other."
"Find the roan's tracks," ordered Garth.
Rina shook her head. "I never follow that horse," she said.
"Find the heaviest tracks then!"
She obediently wheeled her horse; and searched the turf again; ridingaround them in wide fanlike sweeps, while Garth waited with a deadlypatience. At last she struck off to the northwest, calling to them, andGarth and Charley spurred after.
"'Erbe't, Mary and her, go this way," she said briefly, as they came up."Nick Grylls take six horse west, and Xavier take four by coulee."
"If we can overtake her before the others come up!" muttered Garth.
Rina, looking at their horses, shrugged significantly.
For half an hour they loped over the prairie without speech. A chill,damp wind stung their faces. The immense and empty plain with its coldshadows wore an ominous look under the lowering sky; a look thatclutched at the breast.
"I t'ink it snow bam-by," Rina had said.
It would need only snow to complete their difficulties. Garth ground histeeth; and urged his horse afresh up every little rise, eagerlysearching the expanse ahead from the top. A glance at last at thestretched nostrils and wet flanks of their mounts told him plainly sucha pace would be slowest in the end. Hardest of all to bear was thenecessity of going slowly.
"What do you know of their plans?" he demanded of Rina.
She shook her head. "They not tell me moch," she said. "They t'ink I toofriendly for you!"
Little by little as they rode, the story was drawn painfully out. "Soonas Charley come to you, they get ready right away," said Rina. "Theycatch all horses, and keep them up coulee, and pack everyt'ing. MaryCo-que-wasa, her go down and watch your house a
ll the time, for goodchance to tak' _her_. When you go out she mak' little fire under thebank for signal; and Nick Grylls and 'Erbe't and Xavier, them all godown. They not tak' me."
Garth cursed himself to think how he had played directly into theirhands.
"I wait, and bam-by they bring her back," continued Rina in her tonelessvoice. "She ver' quiet. She mak' no cry. By the fire I see her face. Itis the face of a dead woman."
A groan was forced between Garth's clenched teeth. "Did they hurt her?"he demanded, waiting for the answer like a condemned man waits for thefinal stroke.
But Rina shook her head. "Nick Grylls, him tak' off his hat, polite,"she said. "'Erbe't not say anyt'ing to her."
He breathed again. "Did they refuse to take you along?" he asked.
The stolid brown face was twisted with pain again. She lowered her head,and clung to the horn of her saddle. "No," she said very low. "They'fraid to leave me be'ind. But they don' want me. And I want to die whenI see 'Erbe't with _her_. They all glad when t'ink I to die!"
Garth forbore to question her further.
His impatience could scarcely brook the necessary pause to let thehorses feed at noon. It was a camp of wretchedness; none of the threeriders thought of eating. All the while the horses cropped, Garth strodeceaselessly up and down, biting his lips; while the white-faced boy, whohad not spoken all morning, sat holding his bursting head between hishands; and Rina, crouching apart, gazed over the prairie with unseeingeyes.
Garth had it ever in mind to save the horses, but his impatience wasincontrollable; he made them start too soon; and throughout theafternoon he urged them more than he knew. The animals failed visibly,hour by hour. It was more than three hours before they came upon thesite of the noon camp of those ahead, showing that they were steadilylosing in the chase.
To be obliged to stop again two hours short of darkness was a crushingdisappointment to Garth; but the horses could go no farther. He couldnever have told how he curbed his impatience throughout that age-longnight. He did not sleep: but an excess of suffering is in the end itsown merciful opiate; and he was not always fully conscious.
With the morning a fresh blow awaited them. Daylight revealed Garth'smount lying dead of exhaustion fifty yards from camp. In a wide circleon the neighbouring heights, the coyotes were squatting on theirhaunches, waiting for the sure feast. It was colder than the day before;and the clouds hung thicker and lower. The three of them approached thedead animal, and looked down upon it stolidly.
Garth set his teeth, and laughed his harsh note. "I will walk," he saidshortly. "I can keep going while you are spelling the horses."
Charley, for the first time, questioned a decision of his leader. "Wecan't spare an hour!" he said with a dull decisiveness, in which therewas nothing boyish. "You have got to keep on ahead. Besides, you can'tfollow the tracks as well as I can, you would lose yourself. I willwalk."
Of the two desperate expedients it was clearly the better; and Garthinstantly acquiesced. Possessed by a master idea, he was incapable offeeling any great compunctions at the idea of the injured boy settingforth on the prairie alone--that would come later. At present he stoodequally ready to sacrifice Charley, or himself, or all three of themtogether, if it would save Natalie.
The boy doggedly busied himself making a bundle of his blankets, andfood enough to last him three days. The rest of his pack was added tothe complaining backs of the other two horses.
Garth did not neglect to consider what he could do to ensure the boy'ssafety. "Better return to the shack," he urged. "You can do it in twomarches. There's plenty of grub there."
But Charley flatly refused.
"Very well," said Garth. "I'll leave a note for you every time we stop,telling you what time we passed. If you don't overtake us to-night orto-morrow, I'll leave more grub for you. If we don't catch them in a dayor so," he added with a look at the remaining horses, "we'll all be inthe same boat again."
It was a grim, brusque leave-taking. The boy averted his head as theyleft him, to hide the look of despair in his eyes. He knew what thelowering, wintry clouds portended on the prairie; and in his heart itwas a final farewell that he bade them. But he kept his chin up, andstrode manfully after.
Garth did not suspect what was passing in his mind; the city man hadnever seen a snowstorm on the prairie. Topping every rise, he lookedback, and waved his hat at the plodding figure, slightly bent under theweight of his pack.
"He's tough! He'll come through all right!" he said to Rina more thanonce--perhaps because he needed secretly to reassure himself.
Rina, preoccupied with her own heavy thoughts, did not seem to careeither way.
About ten o'clock they descended into a considerable coulee whose stonybed still contained some standing pools. Here, by the water, Grylls'sparty had encamped for the night; and the ashes of their fire were stillwarm. From the extent of the trampling in the mud, it was clear thewhole party had made a rendezvous here; and beyond the coulee, evenGarth had no difficulty in following the trail of the fourteen horsesover the turf. He rode ahead now; consulting his compass, he saw thatthe way always led due northwest.
Some time later his eye was attracted by a splash of white in the grass.Throwing himself off his horse, he pounced upon it. It was a plainlittle square of linen; and in the border was printed in small neatcharacters "N. Bland." The find nearly unmanned him; he fancied thescrap of linen was still damp with her tears; and the old madness ofdesperation surged over him again. He forced his weary horse into agallop. Rina indifferently followed.
Pretty soon the snow began to fall in large, wet flakes, drifting downas idly and erratically as the opening notes of one who dreams at thepiano--large flakes falling direct to the ground and lingering therelike measured notes; and little white coveys suddenly eddying hither andthither, like aimless runs up and down the keyboard.
Rina lifted her brown face to the darkening sky. "We better go back tothe coulee," she called after Garth.
He frowned. "Nonsense!" he cried irritably. "A flurry of snow can'thurt anybody! It'll turn into rain directly!"
She shrugged, and said no more.
The mute symphony of the snow was played imperceptibly accelerando. Theflakes became smaller, and thicker, and dryer; and each gust of wind wasa hint steadier and stronger than the last. Their radius of view waslittle by little restricted: the distant hills faded out of sight, andthe white dome closed over and around them, until at last they seemed tobe traversing a little island of firm ground, with edges crumbling intoa misty void. Presently the ground, too, was overlaid with white; earthand sky commingled indistinguishably; and all that held them to earthwas the quadruple line of black hoof-marks extending a little waybehind. The horses sulked and hung their heads.
They came to another and a shallower coulee, which seemed to take anortheasterly direction across the prairie; whereas all the watercoursesthey had crossed hitherto tended to the southeast. Garth, on the watchfor any such evidences, suspected they had crossed a height of land. Onthe other side of this coulee he found he could no longer trace thepassage of the preceding cavalcade under the thickening snow. Heimpatiently called on Rina; but she merely shrugged, refusing to look.
"No can follow in the snow!" she said contemptuously.
At every hint of stoppage, Garth's blood surged dangerously upward. Hepressed his knuckles against his temples, and strove to think. The twohorses, instinctively drawing close together, turned their tails to thedriving flakes. Rina sat hunched in her saddle, as indifferent as asquat, clay image.
"I will ride on," he said thickly.
She gave no sign.
He consulted his compass. "We have ridden due northwest all the way," hesaid. "Where are they heading for?"
"Death River, I guess," she answered, pointing. "The crossing isnorthwest."
"How far?" he demanded.
"Two days' journey, maybe seventy-five miles."
"You wait for the boy in the shelter of the poplar bluff across thecoulee," he sa
id. "When the snow stops, follow on as well as you can."
"Charley not come any more," said Rina in a tone of quiet fatalism."When snow hide our track, he walk round and round. Bam-by he fall down,and not get up. He die. He know that."
Garth, ready to push into the storm, reined up again. Her surenesschilled his impatient hurry; and the oft-told tragedies of prairiesnowstorms recurred to him.
"Die in the snow!" he repeated dully, hanging in agonizing indecisionbetween the two images; Natalie ahead, and the solitary boy ploddingbehind. On the one hand he thought: "The storm has held them up,somewhere just ahead! It is my only chance of overtaking them!" and thenhe turned his horse's head north. But the other thought would not down."The kid knew it meant death to walk; and he chose it!" Garth finallyled the way back over the coulee.
Rina had no difficulty making herself comfortable among the young poplartrees. She improvised a shelter out of a blanket stretched over twoinclined saplings; and in front of it she built a fire. Garth meanwhilechanged to the fresher horse, and started back over their own dimmingtrail.
"You never find him now," Rina said hopelessly, as he left her.
Garth merely set his jaw.
His watch told him it was past eleven. He calculated they had coveredfive miles between the two coulees, and that it would be abouttwenty-five miles all told back to their own camping-place. Supposingthe boy to have averaged three miles an hour, he would now be sometwelve miles away, and if he kept walking, Garth, at his present pace,should come upon him in an hour and a half's riding.
The marks of their previous passage were soon completely obliterated;and thereafter Garth rode compass in hand. With the wind behind, hishorse showed a better stomach for travelling; and he made the firstcoulee in something under an hour. Here a little search revealed thehalf-burned logs of Grylls's fire under the snow; and this put himdirectly in the path again. He stood up the logs, to make a better markagainst his return.
He began to keep a sharp lookout for the boy, frequently shouting hisname. His voice, muffled by the thickly falling flakes, had an odd,deadened ring in his own ears; and he doubted if he could be heard veryfar. When he considered the vast width of the prairie, and the extremeimprobability of two figures, shaping opposite courses, meetingpoint-blank in the middle of it, he was ready to despair of finding theboy. It maddened him to think how close they might pass, without eitherbeing aware.
Later, he adopted another expedient. Every fifteen minutes he turned hishorse at right angles to his course, and galloping far to the right andleft searched the snow for human tracks; then, picking up his trailwhere he left it, he would push a little farther ahead. In this way hecould sweep a path about a mile wide on the prairie.
But the hours passed, and the snow deepened, and there was neither sightnor sound of the boy. Garth was not sparing of his bitter self-reproachesthen, for having abandoned him. It seemed to poor Garth in hishopelessness, as if his whole course through the country had beenmarked by a series of hideous blunders.
Less than three hours of daylight now remained to him, and he was allof ten miles from his own base. He dared not push farther away, for,little as he regarded himself, he could take no risks while Natalie'sfate still hung in the balance. But before giving up, he determinedto make one last sortie back and forth across the prairie. Far to theright, just as hope was expiring, he saw, crossing the white expanse, acrooked, double row of slight depressions, like little moulds, slowlyfilling with powdery snow.
Flinging himself off his horse, with a beating heart, he hastily scoopedout the snow. A man's footprint was clearly revealed. With a shout,he mounted again and jerked his horse's head around. The weary animalbalked flatly at facing the storm, but Garth, beside himself, lashed himuntil he plunged into it. The tracks momentarily grew plainer. Whilethey had strayed far to the left of his own course, he wondered to seethat they still held the right direction in the main.
He redoubled his shouting. At last a muffled, indistinguishable soundanswered him from ahead; and presently out of the wild whirl of flakes,a spectral figure was slowly resolved--as poignant a symbol of humanityas the last man on earth.
"Charley! Charley!" shouted Garth.
The figure turned uncertainly. Under the snow-laden lashes the eyes werevague.
Garth slipped out of the saddle; and, throwing his arm about the boy'sshoulders, caught him to his breast. "Thank God! I was in time!" hecried in a great voice.
"It's really you!" the boy murmured. "I thought I was hearing things."
Garth clapped him between the shoulders. "Buck up, my hearty!" he cried."It's all right now!"
"Have you got Natalie?" the boy said quickly.
Garth sadly shook his head.
"You shouldn't have come back then," he said dully. "I didn't expectit!"
Garth hugged him anew. "Dear lad!" he cried with a break in his voice."I couldn't let you die in the snow!"
The kindness brought fuller consciousness back to the boy's eyes. Heclung to Garth then; and lowered his head; and whimpered a little. Afterall he was only seventeen.
Garth hoisted him to the saddle; and headed into the storm again. Thehorse balked continually, sorely trying his patience. Their progress wasvery slow. Garth sought to keep Charley up with cheerful speech.
"Bully for you to keep going!" he cried.
"It was because--Natalie might need me," the boy's voice trailed.
"And right on the course!" Garth sang. "How did you keep it?"
"When the snow hid your tracks--I remembered--to keep the wind on myright cheek," he murmured.
That was the last Garth could get out of him. He was presently alarmedto find the boy growing increasingly numb and drowsy; even he knew whatthis portended in the North. He pulled him out of the saddle; and madehim walk; supporting him with one arm, while with the other he led thehorse. The animal took advantage of his partial helplessness, to planthis legs and pull back anew. If there was ever an excuse for angeragainst a dumb beast, surely hard-pressed Garth had it then. The horsewas crazed with exhaustion, and terror of the storm; and tugs and kickswere of no avail. Garth could not bring in both boy and horse by mainstrength; and in the end, with hearty curses, he was obliged to abandonthe beast to his fate.
Garth, pulling his hat over his eyes, and drawing the boy's arm acrosshis shoulders, doggedly pushed into the storm. He thus half supported,half dragged his companion, who was, nevertheless, compelled to use hisown legs. Charley never spoke except now and then to beg drowsily to belet alone. In Garth's flask was about a gill of precious stimulant, and,when the boy's legs failed him, he doled it out in sips.
They had at least nine miles to cover--and only two hours of daylightleft. Try as he would to banish it, the sense of nine miles' distancewould roll itself interminably out before Garth's mind's eye. Nine milesinto two hours--the sum had no answer. Afterward night and storm on theempty prairie--what was the use? But when he reached this point, hewould grit his teeth and take a fresh hold of the boy. If he had anyother defined thought besides this painful round, it was to thank Godthat he was strong; he needed every ounce of it now.
Instead of attempting to pick up his own trail--surely obscured by nowin the snow--he shaped his course northwest, trusting to strike thecoulee at its nearest point, and travel down until he hit the mark hehad set up. It was a little longer so; but the result justified it, forthere was some shelter in the coulee; and working down the bottom, theycould not miss the mark.
It was half-past four by Garth's watch when they laboriously climbed upthe other side; and set their course by compass again for Rina's camp.It grew colder hourly; and the snowflakes became as hard and sharp asgrains of coarse powder. Charley was kept going automatically byfrequent small doses of the spirit from the flask. Garth dared not spareany of it for himself. It soon began to grow dark; and long before Garthcould hope they had nearly covered the distance between the two coulees,it became totally dark; and he could no longer read the face of hiscompass. Fortunately the win
d held steady from the north; he struggledahead, keeping it on his right cheek as Charley had done before him.
Garth's head became confused; he was no longer sensible of the passageof time. Only his will kept his legs at their work. Drowsiness creptover him; and with it a growing sense of the uselessness of strugglingfurther. He fought it for a while, but with subsiding energy. His kneesbegan to weaken under him; he sank down. With a desperate effort, hestruggled up again; and won another painful hundred yards. He wasfalling again--and this time he did not care--when suddenly the groundfell away from under his feet, he pitched forward, and he and the boyrolled down a steep declivity together.
Garth instantly knew they had reached the second coulee; and the thoughtcleared his fogged senses like the draught from his flask which he couldnot spare himself. He poured the last drops between Charley's numb lips;and turned to the right over the stony bed of the watercourse. Heremembered Charley had strayed far to the left of his true course whenguiding himself by the wind; and he had also observed in himself atendency to swerve to that side, when working by compass. So he was surethey were somewhere above the poplar bluff--how far he dared not guess.
He was right. Utterly worn out by a seeming interminable strugglethrough the drifts in the bottom of the coulee, at last a misty, pinkishaura blushed in the snowy night. It was Rina's fire--warmth and shelter!and before it a little animal was roasting on a spit. Garth's sensesslipped away in rapture at the smell it sent forth.