Chapter XX: When Spring Came Back

Through January and February the temperature fell lower and lower, and winter, like a white, constricting monster, bound the forest country in tighter embrace. The gray specter of famine walked through the wilderness, reaching here and there and everywhere with a blighting touch of death, threatening at the last to take off the surviving creatures of the coverts and runways, that still tried so hard to live. March came with high winds, with clear sunny days and nights that crackled under the frosty stars. The two policemen continued to live in their cave, and while Dexter grew thin and gaunt with the privations of the passing months, the convalescent Devreaux, astonishingly, began to pick up in weight and strength.

The sun swung gradually northward, and the silvery pale rays changed to gold; for a few minutes at noon-day a faint warmth might be felt, and water dripped from the snow-laden trees. In a short while the thick ground crust would drop in, and after that release from the frozen bonds of winter would come swiftly.

It was the season of avalanches. The snow piled on the higher mountain peaks was beginning to soften and settle; and sometimes the overweighted masses would slip loose and start for the lower valleys, picking up more snow and ice chunks and bowlders, gaining in momentum and size until great trees were snapped off like match sticks; and all was carried to the bottom in a rush of sound that shook the mountainsides. Dexter was often awakened nights by the dreaded thunder of a timber wreck, and knew that somewhere a forested slope had been suddenly razed as bare as his own clean-shaven jaw.

By every sign and sound the inmates of the Saddle Mountain cave knew that spring was at hand. "The travelways will be open in a few more weeks," Devreaux remarked one morning as he peered out from the cavern mouth. "If our fellow sojourners are still alive they'll soon be hitting for the outlet--north."

"I've been puzzling over the singular events of last fall," said Dexter, "and I can think of but one explanation. There are at least three fugitives from the country below--as far as we know there may be more--desperate groups who suddenly bob up in a far-off valley of the wilderness. It isn't likely that they all just happened to drop in like that; it's too much like deliberate planning. I shouldn't be at all surprised to discover that we've stumbled upon a sort of 'underground railroad'--a chain of settlers and trappers reaching clear through the woods, banded together in a scheme to help people who, for one reason or another, must flee from the States."

"Passing 'em from hand to hand," Devreaux cut in with quickening interest. "Run 'em across country to one of the lonely fiords along the northwest coast, where a yacht or tramp steamer could put in undetected, and cruise off for the Orient, say, with a passenger list of folks who have said ta-ta to the police back home." He nodded with growing conviction. "It wouldn't astonish me if that is exactly what is being done."

"Profitable scheme for a man who organized the business properly," observed Dexter. "All he would have to do would be to establish his chain of way stations--cabins and shacks of so-called trappers. Agents in the states to dicker with people who needed such help, and were willing to pay. And they'd pay heavy. Take Crill: he probably couldn't find his way two miles through the forest without a guide. He'll be hanged in the Cook County jail, if he's caught. You can imagine what he'd give to an organization that promised to escort him to safety: ten, fifty thousand dollars--any sum he could scrape together!"

"Assuming that you may have guessed the truth," mused the superintendent, "we accidentally derailed the train. To settle with us they were delayed a few precious days, and the snows came and hung 'em up here for the winter."

"If I've anything to say about it," said Dexter with outthrust jaw, "the train's going into another ditch this spring."

The colonel glanced sharply at his companion. "What are you planning to do?"

"Going after them."

"They're too many for you, corporal, and you haven't even a rifle." Devreaux studied the fire for a moment with scowling face. "I'll tell you," he said at length. "There's only one thing to do. It'll be hot weather before this lung of mine is equal to heavy breathing. You'll have to work alone, I'm afraid. If I were you, the minute mountain travel is possible, I'd make for the north pass, and hide in the neighborhood. When the gang comes along, as they undoubtedly will, pick up the trail, but don't show yourself. Our men from the fort are bound to come to hunt for me as soon as they can get through the mountains. I'll make my way by easy stages to the lower pass, and meet them. Meanwhile, you blaze your path behind you, and it shouldn't be long before you have a squad of Mounties trailing by forced marches to your help."

Dexter considered for a moment, and nodded a tentative agreement. "We'll put it over somehow--when the time comes," he said.

By the middle of March the colonel was able to shed his bearskin robes and sit up by the fire, and he even essayed a few tottering steps about the cave. He could attend the fire now, or defend himself in case of an unexpected attack, and Dexter one morning decided that he might safely leave his patient alone for a day or two, while he made the trip to the lower valley to recover the packs of provisions that Devreaux and Constable Graves had cached there the previous fall.

The colonel, who had grown very weary of a diet of meat straight, readily assented to the plan; so the corporal lashed on his snowshoes and set forth on a long and difficult journey.

The surface crust had fallen through on the exposed hillsides, and wet sticky snow clogged the racket webs, making each footstep a dragging effort; but the corporal broke out his toilsome trail down the length of the valley, and by nightfall had sighted the landmarks that led him to the place where the packs were buried. He tied up a bundle of the priceless luxuries he found--evaporated fruits, tea, coffee, sugar, flour--as much as he could carry on his back. That night he fed himself to repletion, and bivouacked until morning in the lee of a thicket that hid the glow of his tiny camp fire. Before daylight he was on his feet again, tramping north in the frosty dawn.

His course led him up along the banks of a small ice-bound brook that twisted through gulley and gorge, in the shadow of towering mountains. He swung along with a steady crunching of snowshoes, feeling a tingle of spring in the air, breathing deeply, almost with elation, his keen gray eyes busy everywhere, taking in the multifarious signs of life awakening. Wherever he looked he saw the tracks of feet--pads and claws; and birds were darting among the thickets. All the forest creatures that had weathered the winter, were out that morning looking for a meal. As Dexter strode onward, curiously watching the runways, he came to the mouth of a dry gulley that sloped up the steep mountainside; and in snow underfoot he saw a mark that halted him as abruptly as a battery shock. It was the print of a man's boot.

The track was freshly made. It was a peculiarly shaped pattern of sole--long and narrow--and as the corporal stooped, staring, he recalled the afternoon on the Saddle Mountain plateau, when Devreaux was shot. The trail he failed to follow that day! Those old prints were identical in outline with this mark, newly tramped in the snow; and he knew that the man who had just passed this place could be none other than "Pink" Crill.

Strange metallic lights gleamed in Dexter's eyes as he surveyed the ground about him. The man had been there only a few minutes before, apparently. He had sat on a fallen log and taken off his snowshoes--probably to rest a pair of sore feet. And then he had tied on his rackets again, and had gone scuffling off up the gulley.

So Crill was alive, prowling through the forest once more. Dexter drew a full breath, and had any one been present to observe the look of satisfaction in his face, it might almost have been supposed that he had stumbled on the tracks of a long-lost friend. He inspected the mechanism of a pistol that had not left its holster in months, and then, with the buoyant step of a man who returns to business after fretting confinement, he started to follow.

The trail led through a clump of giant spruces that choked the mouth of the gulley. Dexter pushed upward through the timber, and presently the heavier growths thinned out, and he gained an unobstructed view of the steep slopes above him. He was standing in a chasm-like fissure, deep, rockwalled, thirty or forty feet in width, which extended on upward in a jagged, crooked course, halfway to the frowning crest of the mountain.

As he gazed towards the heights he caught a movement at the farther end of the crevice, and saw a man climb out of the draw to the bare snow-field that pitched downward sharply from the lofty ridge above. The distance was too great for actual identification, but Dexter was certain that the climber must be Crill.

The man had started to mount the slope, but after his first balancing step or two he stopped, and for some reason decided to look down behind him. And by the sudden tensing attitude of his body, Dexter knew that he had seen his pursuer.

For a second or two the figure remained motionless, gazing down the long fissure. Then, abruptly, the man straightened and turned to wave his arm frantically, as though he were trying to attract the attention of some one on the upper ridge.

Dexter cast a wary glance towards the distant heights. Several hundred yards above him the ridge of the mountain loomed in stark white outline against the glaring sky; and at the topmost point a faint bluish shadow marked the position of an overhanging drift--a formation known as a "snow cornice"--dreaded by mountaineers.

With a sudden feeling of disquiet, Dexter shaded his eyes to survey the upper ridge; and all at once he made out a tiny figure standing erect and sentinel-like, clearly outlined against the limpid horizon. As he looked, a second figure hove into view--a third: three human shapes--men!

The climber on the middle slope was waving one hand, and pointing down the gulley with the other. Dexter had the unpleasant knowledge that the group on the ridge had caught sight of him. In the moment of his hesitation he saw one of the small figures leave the others and move cautiously towards the edge of the snow cornice. And then, as he peered upward, his eyes widened in horrified comprehension. The man had a stick or a rifle in his hands, and he was bending forward, apparently prying at the overhanging drift. The mass of snow, almost loosened by its own soggy weight, was ready to break off at the slightest touch.

Dexter saw the shadow disappear as the cornice gave way; saw a flash of white, a spurting cloud of snow. And as he turned ignominiously to flee for his life, he heard a crash from the ridge top, and then the gathering roar of an avalanche that descended the slope behind him.