He dared to trust no one else in the cab of the panting “Swamp Swogon” as engineer, and rushed back from his lines when the fireman signalled with the whistle that they were ready for a return trip. It may readily be imagined that with duties pressing on him in that fashion Parker had little time in which to worry about the next move of Colonel Ward. And the men worked as zealously as tho they too had forgotten the menace that threatened in the north.
In three days fully half the weight of material had been safely landed across the lake.
But on the evening of the third day Parker was more seriously alarmed by the weather-frowns than he had been by the threats of Gideon Ward himself.
The postmaster presaged it, sniffing into the dusk with upturned nose and wagging his head ominously.
“I reckon old Gid has got one more privilege of these north woods into his clutch and is now handlin' the weather for the section,” he said. “For if we ain't goin' to have a spell of the soft and moist that will put you out of business for a while, then I miss my guess.”
It began with a fog and ended in a driving rainstorm that converted the surface of the lake into an expanse of slush that there was no dealing with.
Parker's experience had been with climatic conditions in lower latitudes and in his alarm he believed that spring had come swooping in on him and that the storm meant the breaking up of the ice or at least would weaken it so that it would not bear his engine.
But the postmaster, who could be a comforter as well as a prophet of ill, took him into the little enclosure of his inner office and showed him a long list of records pencilled on the slide of his wicket.
“Ice was never known to break up in Spinnaker earlier than the first week in May,” said Dodge, “and this rain-spitting won't open so much as a riffle. You just keep cool and wait.”
At the end of the rain-storm the weather helped Parker to keep cool. He heard the wind roaring from the northwest in the night. The frame of the little tavern shuddered. Ice fragments, torn from eaves and gables, went spinning away into the darkness over the frozen crust with the sound of the bells of fairy sleighs.