The White Desert

by Courtney Ryley Cooper

"It was part of my agreement, Ba'tiste, that he be forced to make no statements regarding my innocence."

"Ah, but—"

"It was either that, or lose the machinery. He's in business. He's afraid of notoriety. The plain, cold truth is that he tried to railroad me, and only my knowledge of that fact led him into doing a decent and honorable thing. But I sealed any chance of his moral aid when I made my bargain. It was my only chance."

Slowly Ba'tiste nodded and slapped the reins on the back of the horse.

"Ba'teese will not see Medaine," came at last, and they went on.

Again the waiting game, but a busy game however, one which kept the ice roads polished and slippery; which resulted, day by day, in a constantly growing mountain of logs about the diminutive sawmill. One in which plans were drawn, and shell-like buildings of mere slats and slab sidings erected, while heavy, stone foundations were laid in the firm, rocky soil to support the machinery, when it arrived. A game in which Houston hurried from the forests to the mill and back again, now riding the log sheds as a matter of swifter locomotion, instead of for the thrill, as he once had done. Another month went by, to bring with it the bill of lading which told that the saws, the beltings, the planers and edgers and trimmers, and the half hundred other items of machinery were at last on their way, a month of activities and—of hopes.

For to Ba'tiste Renaud and Barry Houston there yet remained one faint chance. The Blackburn crowd had taken on a gamble, one which, at the time, had seemed safe enough; the investment of thousands of dollars for a plant which they had believed firmly would be free of competition. That plant could not hope for sufficient business to keep it alive, with the railroad contract gone, and the bigger mill of Houston and Renaud in successful operation. There would come the time when they must forfeit that lease and contract through non-payment, or agree to re-lease them to the original owner. But would that time arrive soon enough? It was a grim possibility,—a gambling wager that held forth hope, and at the same time threatened them with extinction. For the same thing applied to Houston and Ba'tiste that applied to Blackburn and Thayer. If they could not make good on their contract, the other mill was ever ready to step in.

"Eet all depen'," said Ba'tiste more than once during the snowy, frost-caked days in which they watched every freight train that pulled, white-coated, over the range into Tabernacle. "Eet all depen' on the future. Mebbe so, we make eet. Mebbe so, we do not. But we gamble, eh, mon Baree?"

"With our last cent," came the answer of the other man, and in the voice was grimness and enthusiasm. It was a game of life or extinction now.

March, and a few warm days, which melted the snows only that they might crust again. Back and forth traveled the bobsled to Tabernacle, only to meet with disappointment.