Daybreak of the second day of imprisonment brought no renewal of the storm, though the sun was hidden and the clouds were dark and lowering. But the morning was to have its tragedy.
The storekeeper who had got on at the station five miles back seemed half demented. He had chafed and grumbled loudly from the first, asserting that his business would be ruined without his immediate presence and attention, and heaping imprecations upon the weather and the railroad company alike. Patience or philosophy seemed entirely lacking in his character. All through the first day of detention he had paced restlessly back and forth throughout the train, a walking expletive, and now he had become furious.
"I must get home," he shouted; "I live only five miles down the track and I'm going to walk it. I know these blizzards, and I'm bigger than any of 'em! I can make it!" and he would have leaped from the train at once had not strong hands restrained him. He went forward mutteringly.
The stillness of all the world about had something to it sinister and threatening. It was like the silence of a graveyard. "I'd rather have that storm howling again, and howling worse than ever," said one of the passengers, "than endure this ghastly quiet. It's altogether too quiet. Something is going to happen!"
He was right. Something was going to happen. The dark clouds were sinking nearer and nearer to the earth, and at last there came a sound, the faintest of sighs, of the coming wind. It deepened steadily until it became more than a sigh; it was a moan. It increased in volume. The moan became a shriek, the shriek a mighty roar, and the blizzard, with its snowfall, was raging about the pass again.
The passengers crowded together at the windows and a few of the more hardy even ventured out upon the platforms to enjoy, or to become apprehensive over, the mighty spectacle.
They were thus engaged when there came rushing excitedly into the car the pert youth who had told the remarkable Indian story the night before.
"The Storekeeper!" he exclaimed. "The Storekeeper is missing! He must have left the train!"
