The special, which brought other seekers besides Joey's grandfather, also conveyed Jimmie Daniels. It was his last assignment with the Press; he and Geraldine were to be married within the week and assume the editorial position at Weatherbee. And he pushed up over Tisdale's trail, now become well broken, eager to make a final scoop and his best one. Hours later, when he should have been back at Scenic Hot Springs, rushing his copy through to his paper, he still remained on the slope below the west portal to carry out the brief and forceful instructions of the man who directed and dominated everybody; who knew in each emergency the one thing to do. Once Jimmie found himself aiding Banks to wrap a woman's body in a blanket to be lowered by tackle down the mountainside. She was young, not older than Geraldine, and the sight of her—rounded cheek, dimpled chin, arm so beautifully molded—all with the life snuffed out without a moment's warning—gave him a sensation of being smothered. He was seized with a compelling desire to get away, and to conquer his panic, he asked the prospector whether this man was not the superintendent of the mountain division.
The mining man replied: "No, that's the railroad boss over there with the gang handling the derrick; this is Tisdale, Hollis Tisdale of Alaska and Washington, D.C. You ought to have heard of him in your line of business if you never happened to see him before."
Then Jimmie, turning to look more directly at the stranger, hastily dropped his face. "You are right," he said softly, "I've known him by sight some time."
Afterwards, while they were having coffee with the station master, Daniels asked Banks how he and Tisdale happened to be at Cascade Tunnel. "I was putting in a little time at the Springs," Banks responded, "but Hollis was a passenger on the stalled train. He took a notion to hike down to the hotel just ahead of the slide."
"You mean that man who has taken charge out there," exclaimed the operator. "I had a talk with him before he started; he was rigging up some snowshoes. He said he was from Alaska, and I put him down for one of those bonanza kings."
"He is," said Banks in his high key. "What he don't know about minerals ain't worth knowing, and he owns one of the finest layouts in the north, Dave Weatherbee's bore."
"The Aurora mine," confirmed Daniels. "And I presume there isn't a man better known, or as well liked, in Alaska."
Banks nodded. "Dave and him was a team. The best known and the best liked
in the whole country. And likely there's men on the top seats in
Washington, D.C., would be glad of a chance to shake hands with Hollis
Tisdale."
"I knew he was somewhere near the top," commented the operator. "He can handle men. I never saw such a fellow. Why, he must have got half-way to the Springs when the slide started, but he was back, climbing up along the edge of it to the wreck, almost before it quit thundering. And he took out a live baby, without a damage mark, and all its folks lying right there dead, before the rest of us got in earshot."
Daniels put down his sandwich and took out his neglected notebook. He gathered all the detail the ready operator could supply: how Tisdale had wrapped the child in a blanket and carried him from place to place, talking to him in his nice, friendly way, amusing him, keeping him quiet, while he worked with the strength of two men to liberate other survivors. And how, when none was left to save, he had taken the baby in his arms and gone to break trail to the Springs to send out news of the disaster. All that the station master and Banks could not tell him, with the name and prominence of Joey's family, Jimmie added later at the chalet, and he finished with a skilful reference to the papoose, killed by accident so many years before. It was a great story. It went into the paper as it stood. And when the day came to leave the Press office, the chief, shaking hands with his "novelist," said it was a fine scoop, and he had always known Jimmie had it in him to make good; he was sorry to lose him. But the Society Editor, reading between the lines, told him it was the greatest apology he could have made. She was proud of him.