Snap: A legend of the Lone Mountain

by Clive Phillipps-Wolley

'Confound the brute,' thought Snap, 'I shouldn't wonder if he means me to follow him across the Rockies. I will head him, though!'

Just then the steer made a false step. One leg went just short of the beam on to which it had intended to step. It lurched forward, and for one moment Snap thought it had gone over into the abyss. But it recovered itself somehow, and stood trembling in every limb, and bellowing piteously in its fear.

Then, unfortunately, Snap himself looked down through the ribs of that skeleton bridge. It was getting dusk now, and he could not see very clearly; but below he could hear the roll of waters amongst the boulders, he could see the tops of trees far below him, and occasionally a white flash of foam where the river dashed against a black rock. He didn't like it, 'you bet,' as he said afterwards, 'he did not like it,' and the more he looked the less he liked it.

For some reason, unexplained, his knees at this juncture acquired an unhappy knack of knocking together, and grew weak and uncertain. With a start he pulled himself together. This would not do at any price. There was another hundred yards of bridge to traverse, and he hardly thought, if the train was 'on time,' that he would be able to coax that steer across before the train reached the bridge.

At that moment a roar sounded behind Snap—the roar and rattle of a huge engine, and then a piercing shriek from the steam-whistle—such a shriek, so shrill, so wailing, that it sounds among the lone peaks of the Rockies like the cry of some tortured spirit.

Snap's heart turned to stone in that awful minute, as the red light rounded the bluff not a hundred yards from the head of the bridge, and rushed towards him. Then the blood came back to his cheek, and the strength to his arm. Death was staring him in the face. Unless he DID something, he had not ten seconds to live. He would have raced for the other end of the bridge, but his brain was keener now than ever in his life before, and he knew human speed would avail him nothing in the time allowed him. In another few seconds the cow-catchers would sweep him off the track and hurl him down, down, rushing through the air over that narrow edge to the sharp, wet rocks below. The rails themselves were so near the edge of the bridge that a man could not stand outside the rails and escape. The foot-board of the train would sweep him down, or the wind from the engine blow him into space. There was only one thing to be done, and with a muttered prayer he did it. Dropping on his knees in the middle of the track, he seized a beam with both hands, lowered himself through the opening, and hung by his hands, dangling over the depth below. If he let go it meant death. His muscles were strong, his grip desperate, but could he hold on when the timbers rocked beneath the great mass of wood and iron which was even now upon them?

It was all like a horrible nightmare. He could see and hear everything so plainly, and think so clearly and so fast. Far down below he heard a great tree crack with the frost; looking up, he could see the Texan steer stupefied with terror. Then the bridge rocked and his hands almost lost their grip; a blaze of lurid light flashed in his eyes and blinded him; a breath as of a furnace licked his face for one moment and made him sick with horror; two or three great, bright sparks of fire dropped past him, down, down, into the darkness; there was a dull thud, and a mass of broken limbs was shot out into the dark night to fall with a faint splash into the river below; and then the train had passed, and Snap hung there still—saved from the very jaws of death.

Then, and not till then, the full horror of the thing came upon him. Then, and not till then, pluck, and coolness, and strength deserted him. He had held firm to the beam when it shook like a leaf in the blast, now he tried to draw himself up and he could not. He, Snap Hales, to whom the horizontal bar in the gymnasium at school had been a favourite plaything, could not, to save his life, draw himself up to his chin, and for a moment his fingers began to let go and he thought of dropping down, that he might have done with the struggle and be still.

Then he tried again. He felt that if he failed this time he would never succeed afterwards; his strength was all going fast, and inch by inch he dragged himself up with desperate effort, until at last he lay with a gasp half-fainting along the bars.

A long blood-curdling howl from somewhere in the mist-filled gorge beneath brought him to himself. Was it possible, he thought, that they had smelt the fresh blood already? Only five seconds more of indecision—a little less strength to regain his position upon the bridge—and his own shattered body might have made a meal for those grim and hungry scavengers! It was a horrible thought, and as he stepped clear of those dangerous timbers Snap looked up thankfully at the bright stars and beyond.