Chapter 4. The Crevasse

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_ CHAPTER IV. THE CREVASSE

For an hour before the Hannah reached Katma Miss O'Neill was busy getting her little brood ready. In that last half-day she was a creature of moods to them. They, too, like Sheba herself, were adventuring into a new world. Somehow they represented to her the last tie that bound her to the life she was leaving. Her heart was tender as a Madonna to these lambs so ill-fitted to face a frigid waste. Their mother had been a good woman. She could tell that. But she had no way of knowing what kind of man their father might be.

Sheba gave Janet advice about where to keep her money and when to wear rubbers and what to do for Billie's cold. She put up a lunch for them to take on the stage. When they said their sniffling good-byes at Katma she was suspiciously bright and merry. Soon the children were laughing again with her.

One glance at their father, who introduced himself to Miss O'Neill as John Husted, relieved her mind greatly. His spontaneous delight at seeing them again and his choking gratitude to her for having looked after them were evidence enough that this kind-eyed man meant to be both father and mother to his recovered little folks. His emotion was too poignant for him to talk about his wife, but Sheba understood and liked him better for it.

Her temporary family stood on the end of the wharf and called good-byes to the girl.

"Tum soon and see us, Aunt Sheba," Billie shouted from his seat on the shoulder of his father.

The children waved handkerchiefs as long as she could be distinguished by them. When they turned away she went directly to her room.

Elliot was passing forward when Miss O'Neill opened her stateroom door to go in. The eyes of the young woman were blind with tears and she was biting her lip to keep back the emotion that welled up. He knew she was very fond of the motherless children, but he guessed at an additional reason for her sobs. She too was as untaught as a child in the life of this frontier land. Whatever she found here--how much of hardship or happiness, of grief or woe--she knew that she had left behind forever the safe harborage of quiet waters in which her life craft had always floated.

It came on to rain in the afternoon. Heavy clouds swept across from the mountains, and the sodden sky opened like a sluice-box. The Kusiak contingent, driven indoors, resorted to bridge. Miss O'Neill read. Gordon Elliot wrote letters, dawdled over magazines, and lounged alternately in the ladies' parlor and the smoking-room, where Macdonald, Strong, a hardware merchant from Fairbanks, and a pair of sour-dough miners had settled themselves to a poker game that was to last all night and well into the next day.

Of the two bridge tables all the players were old-timers except Mrs. Mallory. Most of them were young enough in years, but they had been of the North long enough to know the gossip of the country and its small politics intimately. They shared common hopes of the day when Alaska would be thrown open to industry and a large population.

But Mrs. Mallory had come in over the ice for the first time last winter. The other women felt that she was a bird of passage, that the frozen Arctic could be no more than a whim to her. They deferred a little to her because she knew the great world--New York, Vienna, London, Paris. Great names fell from her lips casually and carelessly. She referred familiarly to princes and famous statesmen, as if she had gossiped with them tete-a-tete over the teacups. She was full of spicy little anecdotes about German royalty and the British aristocracy. It was no wonder, Gordon Elliot thought, that she had rather stunned the little social set of Kusiak.

Through Northrup and Trelawney a new slant on Macdonald was given to Gordon. He had fallen into casual talk with them after dinner on the fore deck. It was still raining, but all three were equipped with slickers or mackintoshes. To his surprise the young man discovered that they bore him no grudge at all for his interference the night before.

"But we ain't through with Colby Macdonald yet," Trelawney explained. "Mind, I don't say we're going to get him. Nothing like that. He knocked me cold with that loaded suitcase of his. By the looks of him I'm even for that. Good enough. But here's the point. We stand for Labor. He stands for Capital. See? Things ain't what they used to be in Alaska, and it's because of Colby Macdonald and his friends. They're grabbers--that's what they are. They want the whole works. A hell of a roar goes up from them when the Government stops their combines, but all the time they're bearing down a little harder on us workingmen. Understand? It's up to us to fight, ain't it?"

Later Elliot put this viewpoint before Strong.

"There's something in it," the miner agreed. "Wages have gone down, and it's partly because the big fellows are consolidating interests. Alaska ain't a poor man's country the way it was. But Mac ain't to blame for that. He has to play the game the way the cards are dealt out."

The sky was clear again when the Hannah drew in to the wharf at Moose Head to unload freight, but the mud in the unpaved street leading to the business section of the little frontier town was instep deep. Many of the passengers hurried ashore to make the most of the five-hour stop. Macdonald, with Mrs. Mallory and their Kusiak friends, disappeared in a bus. Elliot put on a pair of heavy boots and started uptown.

At the end of the wharf he passed Miss O'Neill. She wore no rubbers and she had come to a halt at the beginning of the mud. After a momentary indecision she returned slowly to the boat.

The young man walked up into the town, but ten minutes later he crossed the gangplank of the Hannah again with a package under his arm. Miss O'Neill was sitting on the forward deck making a pretense to herself of reading. This was where Elliot had expected to find her, but now that the moment of attack had come he had to take his fear by the throat. When he had thought of it first there seemed nothing difficult about offering to do her a kindness, yet he found himself shrinking from the chance of a rebuff.

He moved over to where she sat and lifted his hat. "I hope you won't think it a liberty, Miss O'Neill, but I've brought you some rubbers from a store uptown. I noticed you couldn't get ashore without them."

Gordon tore the paper wrapping from his package and disclosed half a dozen pairs of rubbers.

The girl was visibly embarrassed. She was not at all certain of the right thing to do. Where she had been brought up young men did not offer courtesies of this sort so informally.

"I--I think I won't need them, thank you. I've decided not to leave the boat," she answered shyly.

Elliot had never been accused of being a quitter. Having begun this, he proposed to see it out. He caught sight of the purser superintending the discharge of cargo and called to him by name. The officer joined them, a pad of paper and a pencil in his hand.

"I'm trying to persuade Miss O'Neill that she ought to go ashore while we're lying here. What was it you told me about the waterfall back of the town?"

"Finest thing of its kind in Alaska. They're so proud of it in this burg that they would like to make it against the law for any one to leave without seeing it. Every one takes it in. We won't get away till night. You've plenty of time if you want to see it."

"Now, will you please introduce me to Miss O'Neill formally?"

The purser went through the usual formula of presentation, adding that Elliot was a government official on his way to Kusiak. Having done his duty by the young man, the busy supercargo retired.

"I'm sure it would do you good to walk up to the waterfall with me, Miss O'Neill," urged Elliot.

She met a little dubiously the smile that would not stay quite extinguished on his good-looking, boyish face. Why shouldn't she go with him, since it was the American way for unchaperoned youth to enjoy itself naturally?

"If they'll fit," the girl answered, eyeing the rubbers.

Gordon dropped to his knee and demonstrated that they would.

As they walked along the muddy street she gave him a friendly little nod of thanks. "Good of you to take the trouble to look out for me."

He laughed. "It was myself I was looking out for. I'm a stranger in the country and was awfully lonesome."

"Is it that this is your first time in too?" she asked shyly.

"You're going to Kusiak, aren't you? Do you know anybody there?" replied Elliot.

"My cousin lives there, but I haven't seen her since I was ten. She's an American. Eleven years ago she visited us in Ireland."

"I'm glad you know some one," he said. "You'll not be so lonesome with some of your people living there. I have two friends at Kusiak--a girl I used to go to school with and her husband."

"Are you going to live at Kusiak?"

"No; but I'll be stationed in the Territory for several months. I'll be in and out of the town a good deal. I hope you'll let me see something of you."

The fine Irish coloring deepened in her cheeks. He had a way of taking in his stride the barriers between them, but it was impossible for her to feel offended at this cheery, vigorous young fellow with the winning smile and the firm-set jaw. She liked the warmth in his honest brown eyes. She liked the play of muscular grace beneath his well-fitting clothes. The sinuous ease of his lean, wide-shouldered body stirred faintly some primitive instinct in her maiden heart. Sheba did not know, as her resilient muscles carried her forward joyfully, that she was answering the call of youth to youth.

Gordon respected her shyness and moved warily to establish his contact. He let the talk drift to impersonal topics as they picked their way out from the town along the mossy trail. The ground was spongy with water. On either side of them ferns and brakes grew lush. Sheba took the porous path with a step elastic. To the young man following she seemed a miracle of supple lightness.

The trail tilted up from the lowlands, led across dips, and into a draw. A little stream meandered down and gurgled over rocks worn smooth by ages of attrition. Alders brushed the stream and their foliage checkered the trail with sunlight and shadow.

They were ascending steadily now along a pathway almost too indistinct to follow. The air was aromatic with pine from a grove that came straggling down the side of a gulch to the brook.

"Do you know, I have a queer feeling that I've seen all this before," the Irish girl said. "Of course I haven't--unless it was in my dreams. Naturally I've thought about Alaska a great deal because my father lived here."

"I didn't know that."

"Yes. He came in with the Klondike stampeders." She added quietly: "He died on Bonanza Creek two years later."

"Was he a miner?"

"Not until he came North. He had an interest in a claim. It later turned out worthless."

A bit of stiff climbing brought them to a boulder field back of which rose a mountain ridge.

"We've got off the trail somehow," Elliot said. "But I don't suppose it matters. If we keep going we're bound to come to the waterfall."

Beyond the boulder field the ridge rose sharply. Gordon looked a little dubiously at Sheba.

"Are you a good climber?"

As she stood in the sunpour, her cheeks flushed with exercise, he could see that her spirit courted adventure.

"I'm sure I must be," she answered with a smile adorable. "I believe I could do the Matterhorn to-day."

Well up on the shoulder of the ridge they stopped to breathe. The distant noise of falling water came faintly to them.

"We're too far to the left--must have followed the wrong spur," Elliot explained. "Probably we can cut across the face of the mountain."

Presently they came to an impasse. The gulch between the two spurs terminated in a rock wall that fell almost sheer for two hundred feet.

The color in the cheeks beneath the eager eyes of the girl was warm. "Let's try it," she begged.

The young man had noticed that she was as sure-footed as a mountain goat and that she could stand on the edge of a precipice without dizziness. The surface of the wall was broken. What it might be beyond he could not tell, but the first fifty feet was a bit of attractive and not too difficult rock traverse.

Now and again he made a suggestion to the young woman following him, but for the most part he trusted her to choose her own foot and hand holds. Her delicacy was silken strong. If she was slender, she was yet deep-bosomed. The movements of the girl were as certain as those of an experienced mountaineer.

The way grew more difficult. They had been following a ledge that narrowed till it ran out. Jutting knobs of feldspar and stunted shrubs growing from crevices offered toe-grips instead of the even foothold of the rock shelf. As Gordon looked down at the dizzy fall beneath them his judgment told him they had better go back. He said as much to his companion.

The smile she flashed at him was delightfully provocative. It served to point the figure she borrowed from Gwen. "So you think I'm a 'fraid-cat, Mr. Elliot?"

His inclination marched with hers. It was their first adventure together and he did not want to spoil it by undue caution. There really was not much danger yet so long as they were careful.

Gordon abandoned the traverse and followed an ascending crack in the wall. The going was hard. It called for endurance and muscle, as well as for a steady head and a sure foot. He looked down at the girl wedged between the slopes of the granite trough.

She read his thought. "The old guard never surrenders, sir," was her quick answer as she brushed in salute with the tips of her fingers a stray lock of hair.

The trough was worse than Elliot had expected. It had in it a good deal of loose rubble that started in small slides at the least pressure.

"Be very careful of your footing," he called back anxiously.

A small grassy platform lay above the upper end of the trough, but the last dozen feet of the approach was a very difficult bit. Gordon took advantage of every least projection. He fought his way up with his back against one wall and his knees pressed to the other. Three feet short of the platform the rock walls became absolutely smooth. The climber could reach within a foot of the top.

"Are you stopped?" asked Sheba.

"Looks that way."

A small pine projected from the edge of the shelf out over the precipice. It might be strong enough to bear his weight. It might not. Gordon unbuckled his belt and threw one end over the trunk of the dwarf tree. Gingerly he tested it with his weight, then went up hand over hand and worked himself over the edge of the little plateau.

"All right?" the girl called up.

"All right. But you can't make it. I'm coming down again."

"I'm going to try."

"I wouldn't, Miss O'Neill. It's really dangerous."

"I'd like to try it. I'll stop if it's too hard," she promised.

The strength of her slender wrists surprised him. She struggled up the vertical crevasse inch by inch. His heart was full of fear, for a misstep now would be fatal. He lay down with his face over the ledge and lowered to her the buckled loop of his belt. Twice she stopped exhausted, her back and her hands pressed against the walls of the trough angle for support.

"Better give it up," he advised.

"I'll not then." She smiled stubbornly as she shook her head.

Presently her fingers touched the belt.

[Illustration: "SO YOU THINK I'M A 'FRAID-CAT, MR. ELLIOT?"]

Gordon edged forward an inch or two farther. "Put your hand through the loop and catch hold of the leather above," he told her.

She did so, and at the same instant her foot slipped. The girl swung out into space suspended by one wrist. The muscles of Elliot hardened into steel as they responded to the strain. His body began to slide very slowly down the incline.

In a moment the acute danger was past. Sheba had found a hold with her feet and relieved somewhat the dead pull upon Elliot.

She had not voiced a cry, but the face that looked up into his was very white.

"Take your time," he said in a quiet, matter-of-fact way.

With his help she came close enough for him to reach her hand. After that it was only a moment before she knelt on the plateau beside him.

"Touch and go, wasn't it?" Sheba tried to smile, but the colorless lips told the young man she was still faint from the shock.

He knew he was going to reproach himself bitterly for having led her into such a risk, but he could not just now afford to waste his energies on regrets. Nor could he let her mind dwell on past dangers so long as there were future ones to be faced.

"You might have sprained your wrist," he said lightly as he rose to examine the cliff still to be negotiated.

Her dark eyes looked at him with quick surprise. "So I might," she answered dryly.

But his indifferent tone had the effect upon her of a plunge into cold water. It braced and stiffened her will. If he wanted to ignore the terrible danger through which she had passed, certainly she was not going to remind him of it.

Between where they stood and the summit of the cliff was another rock traverse. A kind of rough, natural stairway led down to a point opposite them. But before this could be reached thirty feet of granite must be crossed. The wall looked hazardous enough in all faith. It lay in the shade, and there were spots where a thin coating of ice covered the smooth slabs. But there was no other way up, and if the traverse could be made the rest was easy.

Gordon was mountaineer enough to know that the climb up is safer than the one back. The only possible way for them to go down the trough was for him to lower her by the belt until she found footing enough to go alone. He did not quite admit it to himself, but in his heart he doubted whether she could make it safely.

The alternative was the cliff face. _

Read next: Chapter 5. Across The Traverse

Read previous: Chapter 3. The Girl From Drogheda

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