The Rim of the Desert

by Ada Woodruff Anderson

As he descended, the trees closed behind Tisdale, rank on rank, and were enveloped in the swaying curtain of the snow. Always a certain number surrounded him; they seemed to march with him like a bodyguard. But he was oblivious of the peril that from the higher peak had appeared so imminent to Lucky Banks. When the snow-cloud lifted, the Pass was still completely veiled from him, and the peak the prospector's party had ascended was then cut off by the intervening ridge. He had crossed the headwaters and was working along this slope down the watercourse, when the noise of the first avalanche startled the gorge. A little later a far shout came to his quick ear. He answered, but when another call reached him from a different point, high up beyond the ridge, he was silent. He knew a company, separated in the neighborhood of the slide, was trying to get into communication. Then, in the interval that he waited, listening, began the ominous roar of the mightier cataclysm. The mountain he had descended seemed to heave; its front gave way; the ridge on which he stood trembled at the concussion.

Instantly, before the clamor ceased and the first cries reached him, Tisdale knew what had occurred. His sense of location told him. Then the fact was pressed on him that some on the unfortunate train still survived. He saw that the course he had taken from the west portal was no longer possible, but by keeping the curve of the ridge which joined the mountain slope and formed the top of the gorge, and by working upward, he should be able to gain the upper edge of the slide where rose the human sounds. He took this way. His shoulder, turned a little, met the lower boughs with the dip and push of the practiced woodsman, and even on the up-grade the distance fell behind him swiftly. Always subconsciously, as he moved, he saw that baby crowing him a good-by, and the young father smiling Godspeed from the observation platform; sometimes the girl mother with tender brown eyes watched him from the background. Suppose their coach, which had directly preceded the observation car, had escaped; the snow-cloud, parting on the mountain top, showed that the roofs of the station still remained.

After a while he noticed two men working downward from the portal along the swath of the avalanche. One, he conjectured, was the operator, but they stopped some distance above him and commenced to remove sections of the débris. Then Hollis saw before him some brilliant spots on the snow. They proved to be only pieces of stained glass from a shattered transom. The side of the car with denuded window casings rested a few feet higher, and a corner of the top of the coach protruded from under the fallen skeleton of a fir. The voices now seemed all around him. Somewhere a man was shouting "Help!" Another groaned, cursing, and, deeper in the wreckage, rose a woman's muffled, continuous screaming. But, nearer than the rest, a child was crying piteously. He reached the intact portion of the crushed roof and found the baby sitting unhurt on a clear breadth of snow. The body of the father was pinned hopelessly beneath the tree, and the mother lay under the fragment of roof, an iron bar on her tender eyes. It was as though Destiny, having destroyed them, whimsically threw a charmed circle around this remaining atom of the family.

"Well, Joey," Tisdale said quietly, "I've come back for you."

Instantly the child stopped crying and turned to listen; then, seeing Tisdale, he began to crow, rocking his little body and catching up handsful of snow to demonstrate his delight. The hands and round bud of a mouth were blue.

"Cold, isn't it, Joey?" And he took the baby in his arms. "We can't find your coat and mittens, but here is a nice blanket."

He stooped, as he spoke, and pulled the blanket from under a broken door, and the child nestled its face in his neck, telling him in expressive, complaining sounds the story of his terror and discomfort.

A man burrowed out of the snow above the log. His leg was injured, but he began to creep, dragging it, in the direction of the woman's voice. "I'm coming, Mary," he cried. "For God's sake, stop."

Tisdale picked up a strip from the broken door and hurried to his aid. He put the child down and used the board as a shovel, and Joey, watching from the peephole in his blanket, laughed and crowed again. Up the slope the operator and his companion had extricated a brakeman, who, forgetting his own injuries, joined the little force of rescuers.

At last the cries ceased. Haste was no longer imperative. The remaining coaches were buried under tons of snow and debris. 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.