Ada Woodruff Anderson

“ Sometimes on long Arctic nights, when they were recalling old times and old songs, he himself had taken Plunkett's part to David's Lionel. He could see that cabin now, the door set wide, while their voices stormed the white silence under the near Yukon stars. His eyes gathered their absent expression. It was as though he looked beyond the park, far and away into other vast solitudes; saw once more the cliffs of Nanatuk looming through fog and heard clearly, booming across the ice, the great, familiar baritone.
The notes of the organ ceased. Tisdale stirred like a man roused from sleep. ”

“ Tisdale laughed again mellowly. "Then it's all right. We are going to see this trip through. But I wish I could show you that Alaska mountainside in midsummer. Imagine violets on violets, thousands of them, springing everywhere in the vivid new grass. You can't avoid crushing some, no matter how carefully you pick your steps. There's a rocky seat half-way up on a level spur, where you might rest, and I would fill your lap with those violets, big, long-stemmed ones, till the blue lights danced in your eyes." ”

“ To Hollis, coming suddenly, as he did, upon the bronze figure in the Wenatchee sunshine, it seemed to warm with a latent consciousness. He felt poignantly a sense of David's personality, as he had known him at the crowning period of his life.
"It suits me," responded Banks. "My, yes, it's about as good a likeness as we can get of Dave." He put on his hat, which involuntarily he had removed, and started the car on around the curve. "But it's a mighty lot like you. It crops out most in the eyes, seeing things off somewheres, clear out of sight, and the way you carry your size. You was a team." ”

“ As these infant orchards dropped behind and the Wenatchee range loomed near, Cerberus detached from the other peaks; but it was no longer a tawny monster on guard; its contour was broken by many terraces, luxuriant with alfalfa and planted with trees.
"Why," exclaimed Mrs. Weatherbee, "there is the gap. Then, this must be the mountain—it reminded me once of a terrible, crouching, wild beast— but it has changed."
"Yes, ma'am," responded Banks, "she's looking tamer now. The peaches have taken right hold, and those fillers of strawberries are hurrying on the green. ”

“ Tisdale answered slowly. "Long before that day I found her, she must have known it was a losing fight. But the glory of the battle is not always to the victor. And she blamed herself that she had not gone north with her husband at the start. You see she loved him, and love with that kind of woman means self-sacrifice; she counted it a privilege to have been there, to have faced the worst with him, done what she could."
Miss Armitage straightened, lifting her head with that movement of a flower shaken on its stem. "Every woman owes it to herself to keep her self-respect," she said. ”

“ A vast company of peaks began to lift, tier on tier like an amphitheater, above the rim of the dome, while far eastward, as they cross-cut the rounding incline, stretched those tawny mountains that had the appearance of strange and watchful beasts, guarding the levels of the desert, bare of snow. Glimpses there were of the blue Columbia, the racy Wenatchee, but Weatherbee's pocket was closed. Then, presently, as they gained the summit, it was no longer an amphitheater into which they looked, but a billowing sea of cloud, out of which rose steep and inhospitable shores. ”

“ Hope is an insistent thing. It may be strangled, lie cold and buried deep in the heart of a man, yet suddenly, without premonition, he may feel it rise and stretch small hands, groping towards a ray of light. So in that reminiscent hour while the train labored up through the Cascades to the great tunnel, Tisdale told himself this woman—the one woman for whom he must have been waiting all these years, at whose coming old and cherished memories had faded to shadows—was very near to loving him. ”

“ But to Tisdale her camaraderie with Nature was charming. It was so very rare. A few of the women he had known hitherto had been capable of it, but they had lived rugged lives; the wilderness gave them little else. And of all the men whom he had made his friends through an eventful career, there was only Foster who sometimes felt the magnitude of high places,—and there had been David Weatherbee. At this thought of Weatherbee his brows clouded, and that last letter, the one that had reached him at Nome and which he still carried in his breast pocket, seemed suddenly to gather a vital quality. ”

“ Tisdale had warned him of the barbed-wire fence, and while he cautiously rounded the mountain, his old misgiving rose. What though he had made good; what though the Iditarod had filled his poke many times over, the north had taken heavy toll. He had left his youth up there, and what would this smart little automobile count against a whole right hand? And this trunkful of clothes—what would it weigh against a good-sized man? Still, still, though she might have taken her pick of 'em all, Annabel had never married, and she had kept his goats. ”

“ The bays began to round a curve and presently Rainier, the lesser heights, all the valley of Kittitas, closed from sight. They had reached the timber belt; poplars threaded the parks of pine, and young growths of fir, like the stiff groves of a toy village, gathered hold on the sharp mountain slopes. Sometimes the voice of a creek, hurrying down the canyon to join the Yakima, broke the stillness, or a desert wind found its way in and went wailing up the water-course. And sometimes in a rocky place, the hoof-beats of the horses, the noise of the wheels, struck an echo from spur to spur. ”

“ She remained in the grove a long time. When she reappeared, the desert eastward was curtained in a gray film. Torn breadths of it, driven by some local current of air, formed tented clouds along the promontory. It was as though yesterday's army was marshalled against other hosts that held the Chelan heights. A twilight indistinctness settled over the valley between. Rain, a downpour, was near. She hurried on to the brow of the plateau, but she dared not attempt to go down around those crumbling chimneys alone. And Tisdale had said he would come back this side of the vale. ”

“ After a while, word was brought that the Great Northern track was buried under forty feet of snow and rock and fallen trees for a distance of nearly a mile. Later a rotary steamed around the high curve on the mountain and stopped, like a toy engine on an upper shelf, while the Spokane local, upon which Banks had expected to return to Weatherbee, forged a few miles beyond the hotel to leave a hundred laborers from Seattle. Thin wreaths of vapor commenced to rise and, gathering volume with incredible swiftness, blotted out the plow and the snow-sheds, and meeting, broke in a storm of hail. ”

“ Then, as she settled back in her chair, her swift side-glance swept Tisdale. It was incredible he had removed so much dust in that brief interval, but plainly, somewhere in that miserable station, he had found water and towels; he had not seemed more fit that morning in the observation car. The hand he laid on the wall as a brace against the rocking of the light caboose was on a level with her eyes, and they rested there. It was a strong, well-made hand, the hand of the capable draughtsman, sensitive yet controlled, and scrupulously cared for. ”

“ It cut the valley diagonally, away from the Wenatchee, past a last orchard, into wild lands that stretched in level benches under the mountain wall. One tawny, sage-mottled slope began to detach from the rest; it took the shape of a reclining brazen beast, partly leopard, partly wolf, and a line of pine trees that had taken root in a moist strata along the backbone had the effect of a bristling mane.
"That is Weatherbee's landmark," said Tisdale. "He called it Cerberus. It is all sketched in true as life on his plans. The gap there under the brute's paw is the entrance to his vale." ”

“ Weatherbee rose from the couch. She stood a moment meeting Elizabeth's earnest look. The shadow of a smile touched her mouth, but well-springs of affection brimmed her eyes. "We cannot wipe out our mistakes, dear," she said. "They are indelible. We have to accept them, study them, use them as a rule from which to work out the problems of our lives. There is no going back, no starting over, if we have missed an easier way. Elizabeth, in one hour on that mountain I saw more of the true Frederic Morganstein than in all the years I had known him before. ”

“ She rose. The smile had left her lips, and she stood looking into his withered face with wide eyes. "I mean so cold you don't care what happens. So cold you can lie down in your tracks, in a sixty-mile-an-hour blizzard and go to sleep."
"No." She shivered, and her voice was almost a whisper. "I am afraid not."
"Then you can't begin to imagine what Tisdale did. You can't see him fighting his way through mountains, mushing ahead on the winter trail, breaking road for his worn-out huskies, alone day after day, with just poor Dave strapped to the sled." ”

“ Sometimes a red-eyed brute turned with lowered horns and dripping mouth, then backed slowly out of the way of the team. Sometimes, in a thicker press, an animal wheeled close to the tires and, stemming the current, sounded a protest. But the young horses, less playful now, divided the great herd and came at last safely out of the smother. The road began to lift, as they rounded the first rampart of the range, and Tisdale's glance fell to her hands. ”

“ Tisdale brought the horses around a sand-pit in the road which began to parallel the river, rolling wide and swift and intensely blue, where the rapids ceased, then he glanced at the other shore, where fantastic columns and broken walls of granite rose like a ruined city through a red glory.
"It is worth coming from New York to see, but you have traveled abroad. Do you know, that disappoints me. A true American should see America first." ”

“ Miss Armitage turned and met his look, questioning, hardly comprehending.
"That sounds occult," she said.
"Does it? Well, perhaps it is. But a man who has lived in the big spaces has his senses sharpened. He sees farther; feels more."
There was a silent moment. The colts, topping a low dune, felt the pressure of the fills on the down-grade, and the nigh horse broke, turning the front wheel into a tangle of sage. "Mr. Tisdale," she cried a little tremulously, "do you think this is a catboat, tacking into a squall? Please, please let me drive." ”

“ Tisdale looked off over the desert. "Friendship up there does mean something," he answered quietly. "Mere companionship in the Alaska wilderness is a test. I don't know whether it's the darkness of those interminable winters, or the monotony that plays on a man's nerves, but I have seen the closest partners get beyond speaking to each other. It's a life to bring out the good and the bad in a man; a life to make men hate; and it can forge two men together. But David Weatherbee never had an enemy. He never failed a man. ”

“ Tisdale's eyes made a swift inventory of the poor shelter, half cabin, partly shed, that evidently housed both the woman and her flock, then searched the barren field for some sort of hitching post. But the few bushes along the stream were small, kept low, doubtless, by the browsing goats, and his glance rested on a fringe of poplars beyond the upper fence.
"There's no way around," he said at last, and the amusement broke softly in his face. "We will have to go through."
"The wicket will take the team singly," she answered, "but we must unhitch and leave the buggy here." ”

“ Weeks of labor, with relays of men, might not reach them all. And it was time to let the outside world know. The telephone lines were down, the telegraph out of commission, and Tisdale, with the baby to bear him company, started to carry the news to Scenic Hot Springs.
It had grown very cold when he rounded the top of the gorge. The arrested thaw hung in myriads of small icicles on every bough; they changed to rubies when the late sun blazed out briefly; the trees seemed strung with gems; the winds that gathered on the high dome above the upper canyon rushed across the summit of the ridge. ”

“ He turned, and the color flushed through his tan. "Why, you are like nothing in the world but a certain Alaska violet I once stumbled on. It was out of season, on a bleak mountainside, where, at the close of a miserable day, I was forced to make camp. A little thing stimulates a man sometimes, and the sight of that flower blooming there when violet time was gone, lifting its head next to a snow-field, nodding so pluckily, holding its own against the bitter wind, buoyed me through a desperate hour." ”

“ There's the coolest, fragrant wood road down there, Mr. Tisdale, from the hotel to Surprise Falls. It follows the stream past deep green pools and cascades breaking among the rocks. Listen. We should hear the river now."
Tisdale smiled. There was nothing to be heard but the echo of the running trucks and the scream of the whistle repeated from cliff and spur. They were switchbacking down the fire-scarred front of a mountain. He bent a little to look beyond her. ”