The Last Three Soldiers

by W. H. Shelton

"PHILIP COULD SEE THE HOLE IN THE SNOW
THROUGH WHICH HE KNEW HE MUST HAVE FALLEN."

Should he wait there to meet certain death in the avalanche to-morrow or the nest day? He thought of the cool courage of Bromley, and wondered what he would do if he were there in his place. As long as there was a foothold to be gained, he knew Bromley would climb higher, if it were only to fall the farther, and he felt a thrill of pride in the dauntless nerve of his comrade. This thought prompted him to do something for himself, and he began by whipping his arms around his body, keeping his back resolutely on the small post-office, and trying to forget its dizzy distance below him. As he grew warmer and stronger, he felt more courage. It was impossible to reach the hole in the snow through which he had come, for the broken sides separated in the wrong way from the perpendicular. He was not a fly to crawl on a ceiling.

A few yards to his right, as he stood facing the mountain, the bank through which his body had broken its way made a smooth curve to the ledge where the icicles began. As he looked at the great polished surface of the snow, the thought came to him that nothing in all the world but the soft moonlight could cling there. Hopeless as the passage by the bank was, he could reach it; and the feeling that it led away to the region above prompted him to pick his way along the narrow ledge until he could touch with his hand the smooth surface of the bank. He could only touch it with his hand, for the edge curved over his head as he stood alongside it. He felt that the bank was hard; he was unable to break its crust with his hand; and he knew that every moment it was growing harder. His strong knife was in his pocket. He drew out this and opened it with his stiff fingers. Then he began to cut his way under the bank. Beyond the first surface the snow yielded readily to his efforts; and as it fell under his feet he made his way diagonally upward until at the end of half an hour, as it seemed to him, he broke the crust of the great bank and pushed his head through into the fair moonlight. He looked up at the glaring steep above him, and it was beyond his power not to take one look back at the tiny post-office below him. If he had not been safely wedged in the bank, it would have been his last look in life. As it was, he shrank trembling into the snow, and for a whole minute he never moved a muscle.

Fortunately for his shattered nerves, it was not necessary to go out upon the surface of the bank, which was considerably less than perpendicular. He had only to cut away the crust with his knife, and so gradually work his way upward in a soft trench, leaving only his head and shoulders above the crust.

Philip felt a strange exultation in this new power to advance upward, and all his sturdy strength came to his aid in his extremity. He felt no disposition to look back at the trail he knew he was leaving in the snow. He was certain now of gaining the top of the bank, but what lay beyond he knew not. Half the distance he had fallen would still be above him. He was almost up now; but at the very top of the bank there was another curl of the snow, and once more he had to burrow under like a mole.

When Philip's head did appear again on the surface, it was not so light as before, and with his first glance around he saw that the moon was already sinking below the opposite ridge. He was almost within reach of another hole to his left; and by its appearance, and by the distance he had come, he knew it was not the same which he had seen from below, and alongside it the last rays of the moon glinted on the brass barrel of the telescope attached to its broken strap. How it had come there he had no idea, any more than he had how he had come to be lying on the ledge above the icicles where he had found himself a few hours before. It was the old familiar telescope of the station, through which the three soldiers had looked at the prisoners and at old Shifless in the valley, and it made him glad as if he had met an old friend. He stretched out his hand to draw it to him. Instead of securing it, his clumsy fingers rolled it from him on the smooth snow, and as he looked at it the telescope turned on end and disappeared through the hole in the bank. In the awful stillness on the side of the mountain, he heard it strike twice. It was nothing to Philip now whether it fell in advance or waited to go down with the avalanche. And just as this thought had passed through his mind, and as he turned his eyes to the side of the cliff above him, the far-away sound of metal striking on stone broke sharply on his ear, and he knew that the telescope had been smashed to atoms on the rocks in the Cove bottom.

From where he crouched now on the snow he could see the edge of the plateau above him, and as near as he could judge it was rather less than fifty feet away. The smooth rock was cased in thin ice—so thin that he believed he could see the black storm-stain underneath. It was growing dark now, and after all his toil and hope he had only gained a little higher seat on the back of the avalanche. He saw with half a glance that it would be impossible to climb higher. He heard the wind whistle through the branches of the dwarfed old chestnut-trees over his head; and as the cold was so still about him, he knew that it was an east wind. He could go nearer to the ledge, but he could gain no foothold on the rock. In the midst of his cruel disappointment and his awful dread of the sun which would come to melt the snow next day, he felt a greater terror than he had felt when he had first found himself down below. His companions might have gone mad and thrown him over the rock. It was all a dark mystery to poor Philip. He could barely see about him now. Even the sun would be better than this darkness. It might be cold to-morrow. At any rate, it would be afternoon before the sun, however warm, could get in its deadly work on the avalanche. It never occurred to him that he was nearly famished, and he must have slept some where he sat in the snow, for he dreamed that the people were gathered at the post-office to see him fall, and a crash like the roar of battle brought him to his senses with a start. The next time he awoke, the bright sun was indeed shining, and he was stiff with the cold, as he had found himself at first. He was hungry, too, as he had never been hungry before, and the fear of starvation seemed more dreadful to him than the dread of the avalanche.

As he lay there in his weakened state, his ears were alert for the faintest sound. He thought he heard a movement on the ledge above him, and then he heard voices clear and distinct. They were the voices of Coleman and Bromley.

"Poor Philip!" he heard them say.

At first he was unable to speak in his excitement, and then he raised his voice with all the strength of his lungs, and cried, "Help! Help!"