"THE STOREKEEPER!" HE EXCLAIMED
There was aroused a sudden and alarmed interest, followed by a hurrying of men to the different platforms, but there was nothing to be seen. The man must have slipped from the train, unobserved, before the recurrence of the storm and made the desperate attempt to reach his home by the exercise of sheer bulldog tenacity and brute force, in struggling through the enormous drifts. Stafford, accompanied by two of the trainmen, made a brief but arduous and difficult search for some distance, but found slight trace of the missing passenger. Close beside the train they discovered where he had leaped off and staggered uncertainly forward, but beyond that there was no sign. The snow had already hidden the reckless being's trail.
There was a sequel, long in coming. Late in the following spring, when the looming drifts of the pass had melted, the mortal part of the Storekeeper was found some distance from the track, where he had stumbled blindly in his wanderings. But of his fate there could, of course, at this time, be no certain knowledge. There was even a chance, some thought, that he might accomplish the seemingly impossible. The men muttered to each other, and that was all. Why the Storekeeper, apparently one possessed of shrewdness at least, should have taken such awful risk no one could say—but it made swift tragedy.
Communication had been maintained with Belden. A path to the telegraph pole utilized by Stafford on the night of the stoppage had been laboriously dug by the trainmen and Stafford had again made the connection and learned the condition of affairs with the rescuing party already started. The report was not altogether encouraging. The vast fall of snow in the canyon, drifted, in some places, higher than the top of the smokestack of the locomotive—for this was the greatest blockade in the history of the road—had proved more than baffling, even with the snow-plow. Scores of men were at work ahead of it with shovels, in the work of bringing the clearance within the range of its capability. The relief train was yet many miles from the one entirely helpless. Still the snow would not be so deep at points ahead, where the canyon widened, and the belief of the rescuers was that the half-entombed would be reached at some hour of the fourth day of their detention. The news was not received with any degree of exultation.
It was at this crisis that Moses appeared to lead those in the Cassowary and their visitors out of the gloom oppressing them.
When men and women of intelligence and brightness and modern perception are cast together in an emergency, there ever appears among them some one who brings the group close together. He may not be the greatest of the group, but he has some dominant instinct in him involving a regard for the comfort of others. Such a man was Colonel Livingston.
The Colonel was a man of thought, and he wanted his own sort of people around him. He had raised a regiment once, when fierce things were going on in the "60's," and he knew how to gather men. He had ranged through the train, like some good-naturedly overbearing Lord High Commissioner selecting those whose appearance most appealed to him and, because of his keen acumen and genial approachment, had captured easily and brought into the Cassowary those whom he thought would swing best into being a healthful and merry part of the fraction of humanity enduring temporary distress. He had an idea.
The occupants of the Cassowary included a number of the more than ordinarily intelligent and cultivated—as would naturally be the case in such a car and on such an extended trip—and all had, by this time, become more or less acquainted, though all had not, like the Colonel, acquired the fancy of addressing others by the title of their occupation. It was to such a group as this that the Colonel, standing at one end of the car, addressed himself:
"I'm afraid that we are flunking a little. I know—I feel it in my bones—that we are going to escape from this cold dilemma without any serious consequence, but we shall not be a credit to ourselves if we falter in the interval. Let us avoid depression. Let us enliven the situation as much as possible. To such end I have a suggestion to make in this connection which, I hope, may be well received. Last night I was much interested in a story told by the buoyant and blithesome young gentleman occupying the end seat on the left side there"—and he indicated the "Gallus Youth"—"and it has come to my mind since that we may greatly relieve the monotony of our case by doing what we do in the smoking compartment, that is, by telling stories. If you consent, I will modestly offer myself as a sort of master of ceremonies. Does the idea meet with any degree of approval?"
There was no dissent, but, instead, a hearty agreement to the proposition, the Colonel's cheery manner having its effect on everybody. For a time, though, the story-telling did not begin.