By and by the other linesman came in with a mule-tail buck, and when Dick gave him Jim's message sat down by the telegraph. Dick went to bed and did not wake until his packers arrived at daybreak. The linesman was watching the telegraph, but the finger had not moved and he owned that he was getting anxious about his comrade.
Dick suggested that they should look for him, but on the whole the linesman hardly thought this necessary. He said the man from the next post would have started to meet Jim. Then Mordaunt wanted to get off. The snow had stopped, the wind had fallen, and if they missed this opportunity, they might be held up by another storm, while their food was getting short. Dick hesitated, but Mordaunt generally led him where he would and after some argument he agreed to start. Half an hour later they left the shack and pushed on down the line.
CHAPTER II
IN THE SNOW
When Jim left the shack the cold pierced his furs like a knife. For a few moments he heard nothing but the roar of the gale and could hardly get his breath. His eyes ran water and the snow beat his smarting face. Then he braced himself, for he had gone out to mend the line on other bitter nights and could not lose his way. Where the telegraph runs through the forests of the North a narrow track is cut for packhorse transport to the linesmen's posts, and one could not push between the trunks that lined the gap without finding thickets and tangles of fallen logs. The track, however, was not graded like a road. Outcropping rocks broke its surface, short brush had grown up, and although the snow had covered some of the obstacles its top was soft.
For a time the trees broke the wind, and Jim pushed on, hoping that he might soon find a trailing wire, but the posts loomed up, undamaged, out of the tossing haze. Luck was obviously against him, and he might be forced to walk half-way to the next shack, from which the other linesman would start. The snow was loose and blew about in a kind of frozen dust that was intolerably painful to his smarting skin. Although his cap had ear-flaps, he could not cover his mouth and nose, and the fine powder, dried by the cold, clogged his eyelashes and filled his nostrils. His old coat did not keep out the wind and, although he was in partial shelter, he was now and then compelled to stop for breath. The gale was getting worse and, as sometimes happens when a blizzard rages, the temperature was falling.
Jim's flesh shrank from the Arctic blast, but he knew that in the North bodily weakness must be conquered. In the stern battle with savage Nature prudence is a handicap; one must risk all and do what one undertakes since there is no place in the wilderness for the man who counts the cost. Moreover, Jim had fought harder fights, when his strength was lowered by want of food, and he went forward, conscious of one thing: the line was broken and must be mended. There was no other way. He must give up his post if he could not make good.
In the meantime his physical senses, developed in the wilds, worked with mechanical regularity and guarded him. He could not hear much through his fur cap and often for some moments could not see, but he stopped when a tossing branch broke off and struck the snow in front, and sprang forward when a fir plunged down a few yards behind. He could not have stated that he knew the danger, but he avoided it where a stranger to the woods would have been crushed.
Perhaps the going was the worst. Plowing through the loose snow, he struck his feet against outcropping rocks and sometimes stubbed them hard on a fallen log. In places he sank deep; the labor was heavy and wind and cold made it awkward to breathe. His lungs seemed cramped; the blood could not properly reach his hands and feet. It was a comfort that they hurt, because when he no longer felt the painful tingling the real trouble would begin. One cannot feel when one's flesh is frozen. He could not have seen his watch had he taken it out, and doubted if there was warmth enough in his body to keep it going, because watches and gun-locks often freeze in the North. For all that, he knew how long he had left the shack and how much ground he had covered.