The Daughter of a Magnate

by Frank H. Spearman

They had planned a quick relief with a small party, for every hour of exposure lessened the missing man's chances. Glover chose for his companions two men: Dancing—far and away the best climber in the telegraph corps, and Smith Young, roadmaster, a chainman of Glover's when he ran the Pilot line. Dancing and Glover were large men of unusual strength, and Young, lighter and smaller, had been known in a pinch to handle an ordinary steel rail. But above everything each—even Glover, the youngest—was a man of resource and experience in mountain craft.

They left the track near the twin bridges with only ropes and picks and skis, and carrying stimulants and food. Without any attempt to catch his trail from where they knew Blood must have started they made their way as directly as possible down the side of the mountain and in the direction of the gap. The stupendous difficulties of making headway across the eastern slope did not become apparent until the rescuing party was out of sight of those they had left, but from where they floundered in ragged washouts or spread in line over glassy escarpments they could see far up the mountain the rotary throwing a white cloud into the sunshine and hear the far-off clamor of the engines on the hill.

Below the snow-field which they crossed they found the superintendent's trail, and saw that his effort had been to cross the gap at that point and make his way out toward the western grade, where an easy climb would have brought him to the track; or where by walking some distance he could reach the track without climbing a foot, the grade there being nearly four per cent.

They saw, too, why he had been forced to give up that hope, for what would have been difficult for three fresh men with shoes was an impossibility for a spent man in the snow alone. They knew that what they had covered in two hours had probably cost him ten, for before they had followed him a dozen feet they saw that he was dragging a leg; farther, the snow showed stains and they crossed a field where he had sat down and bandaged his leg after it had bled for a hundred yards.

The trail began, as they went on, to lose its character. Whether from weakness or uncertainty Blood's steps had become wandering, and they noticed that he paid less attention to directness, but shunned every obstacle that called for climbing, struggling great distances around rough places to avoid them. They knew it meant that he was husbanding failing strength and was striving to avoid reopening his wound.

Twice they marked places in which he had sat to adjust his bandages, and the strain of what they read in the snow quickened their anxiety. Since that day Smith Young, superintendent now of the mountain division, has never hunted, because he could never afterward follow the trail of a wounded animal.

They found places where he had hunted for fuel, and firing signals regularly they reached the spot where he had camped the night before, and saw the ashes of his fire. He was headed south; not because there was more hope that way—there was less—but as if he must keep moving, and that were easiest. A quarter of a mile below where he had spent the night they caught sight of a man sitting on a fallen tree resting his leg. The next moment three men were in a tumbling race across the slope, and Blood, weakly hurrahing, fainted in Glover's arms.

His story was short. He reminded his rescuers of the little spring on the hill at the point where the wreck had occurred. The ice that always spread across the track and over the edge of the gulch had been chopped out by the shovellers the afternoon before, but water trickling from the rock had laid a fresh trap for unwary feet during the night. In jumping from the gangway at the moment of the wreck Blood's heels had landed on smooth ice and he had tumbled and slid six hundred feet. Recovering consciousness at the bottom of a washout he found the calf of one leg ripped a little, as he put it. The loss of one side of his mustache, swept away in the slide, and leaving on his face a peculiarly forlorn expression, he did not take account of—declaring on the whole, as he smiled into the swimming eyes around him, that with the exception of tobacco he was doing very well.

They got him in front of a big fire, plied him with food and stimulants, and Glover, from a surgical packet, bandaged anew the wound in his leg. Then came the question of retreat.

They discussed two plans. The first to retrace their steps entirely; the second, to go back to where the gap could be attempted and the western track gained below the hill. Each meant long and severe climbing, each presented its particular difficulties, and three men of the four felt that if the torn artery opened once more their victory would be barren—that Blood needed surgical aid promptly if at all. But Dancing had a third plan.