Then he caught up a handful of snow with which he began to rub the woman's face. Afterwards he removed her gloves to manipulate her cold hands. He worked swiftly, with the deftness of practice, but the results were slow, and presently he took the rug from the pack he carried and covered her while he felt in Frederic's pockets for the flask he had neglected to return. "Likely there wasn't a drop left when she came to need it, you brute. And I'd like to leave you here to take your chances. You can thank your luck I've got to use you."

Banks keyed his voice high, between breaths, to out-scale the wind, but he did not wait for a reply. Before he finished speaking, he had opened his big, keen-bladed clasp-knife and commenced to cut broad strips from the rug. He passed some of these, not without effort, under Morganstein's body, trussing the arms. Then, wrapping the smaller figure snugly in the blanket, he lifted it on to the human toboggan he had made and bound it securely. Finally he converted the shoulder-straps of his pack into a sort of steering gear, to which he fastened his life-line.

These preparations had been quickly made. It was not yet dark when he worked this sled over the rim of the spur and began to descend the long slope. The violence of the wind was broken there, so that he was able to travel erect, drawing his load. After a while, when the flurry of snow had passed, a crust formed on the surface, and in steeper pitches he was obliged to let the toboggan forge ahead, using himself as a drag. With the change to colder temperature, there was no further danger of slides, and to avoid the avalanche that had turned Morganstein back, the prospector shaped his course more directly into the canyon. Soon he was below the clouds; between their ragged edges a few stars appeared. Beyond a buttress shone a ruddy illumination. Some firs stood against it darkly. It was the fire Marcia and Elizabeth were watching at the place where he had cached the surplus supplies that morning. It served as a beacon when the crispness ceased, and for an interval he was forced to mush laboriously through soft drifts. Then he came to a first bare spot. It was in crossing this rough ground that Frederic showed signs of returning consciousness. But Banks gave him no attention. He had caught a strange sound on the wind. Others, far off, rose while he listened. Presently, looking back beyond the end of the ridge that divided the upper gorge, he saw twinkling lights. They were the lanterns of the searchers at the wrecked train.

The little man did not exclaim. He did not pray. His was the anguish of soul which finds no expression.

CHAPTER XXVII

KISMET. AN ACT OF GOD

Afterwards, some who compared the slope where the Oriental Limited had stood, with the terrible pitches along the lower switchback, said: "It was Fate;" and the defense in the damage suits against the Great Northern, which were decided in favor of the company, called that catastrophe at Cascade tunnel "An Act of God." In either solution, the fact that counted was that no avalanche had occurred at this point before; mountain men had regarded it as absolutely safe. At noon that day, a rumor reached the stalled train that a slide at the front had struck one of the rotaries. Laborers, at their own peril, had excavated the crew, but the plow was out of commission, and the track was buried sixty feet under fresh tons of snow and rock and fallen timber. The Limited could not move within forty-eight hours, perhaps three days.

Tisdale picked up his bag and went out to the observation platform. He knew that to attempt to follow the railroad through those swaths the avalanches had left, under the burned skeletons of trees ready to topple at the first pressure of other bodies of snow, was to take one's life needlessly in his hands; but there was another way. The slope from the track at the portal dipped through a park of hemlock and fir, and the blaze that had swept the lower mountainside had not reached this timber; the great boughs, like fishers' nets, supported their dripping accumulations. Also, at this altitude, there was no undergrowth. To make the drop directly into the canyon and follow the river down to Scenic Hot Springs meant little more to him than a bracing tramp of a few hours.

Snowshoes were a necessity, and the demand at the little station had long exceeded the supply, but the operator was able to furnish the length of bale rope Tisdale asked of him. From the office door, where he had curiously followed to see the line put to use, he watched the traveler secure two pliable branches of hemlock, of the same size, which he brought to the station platform, and, having stripped them of needles, bent into ovals. Then, laying aside one, he commenced to weave half of the rope net-wise, filling the space in the frame he held. A sudden intelligence leaped in the agent's face. "That's simple enough," he exclaimed. "And they'll carry you as far as you want to go."

Tisdale smiled, nodding, and picked up the remaining frame.