The Iron Trail

by Rex Beach

  XXV

  PREPARATIONS

  The building of the Salmon River bridge will not soon be forgotten byengineers and men of science. But, while the technical features of theundertaking are familiar to a few, the general public knows littleabout how the work was actually done; and since the building of thebridge was the pivotal point in Murray O'Neil's career, it may be wellto describe in some detail its various phases--the steps which led upto that day when the Salmon burst her bonds and put the result of allhis planning and labor to the final test.

  Nowhere else in the history of bridge-building had such conditions beenencountered; nowhere on earth had work of this character been attendedwith greater hazards; never had circumstances created a situation ofmore dramatic interest. By many the whole venture was regarded as areckless gamble; for more than a million dollars had been risked on thechance not alone that O'Neil could build supports which the ice couldnot demolish, but that he could build them under the most seriousdifficulties in record-breaking time. Far more than the mere cost ofthe structure hinged upon his success: failure would mean that hiswhole investment up to that point would be wiped out, to say nothing ofthe twenty-million-dollar project of a trunk-line up the valley of theSalmon.

  Had the Government permitted the Kyak coal-fields to be opened up, thelower reaches of the S. R. & N. would have had a value, but allactivity in that region had been throttled, and the policy of delay andindecision at headquarters promised no relief.

  Careful as had been the plans, exhaustive and painstaking as had beenthe preparations, the bridge-builders met with unpreventable delays,disappointments, and disasters; for man is but a feeble creature whosebrain tires and whose dreams are brittle. It is with these hindrancesand accidents and with their effect upon the outcome that we have todeal.

  Of course, the greatest handicap, the one ever-present obstacle, wasthe cold, and this made itself most troublesome in the sinking of thecaissons and the building of the concrete piers. It was necessary, forinstance, to house in all cement work, and to raise the temperature notonly of the air surrounding it, but of the materials themselves beforethey were mixed and laid. Huge wind-breaks had to be built to protectthe outside men from the gales that scoured the river-bed, and thesewere forever blowing down or suffering damage from the hurricanes. Allthis, however, had been anticipated: it was but the normal condition ofwork in the northland. And it was not until the middle of winter,shortly after Eliza's and Natalie's visit to the front, that anunexpected danger threatened, a danger more appalling than any uponwhich O'Neil and his assistants had reckoned.

  In laying his plans Parker had proceeded upon the assumption that, oncethe cold had gripped the glaciers, they would remain motionless untilspring. All available evidence went to prove the correctness of thissupposition, but Alaska is a land of surprises, of contrasts, ofcontradictions: study of its phenomena is too recent to makepracticable the laying down of hard and fast rules. In the midst of aseason of cruelly low temperatures there came a thaw, unprecedented,inexplicable. A tremendous warm breath from the Pacific rollednorthward, bathing the frozen plains and mountain ranges. Blizzardsturned to rains and weeping fogs, the dry and shifting snow-fieldsmelted, water ran in the courses. Winter loosed its hold; its mantleslipped. Nothing like this had ever been known or imagined. It wasimpossible! It was as if the unhallowed region were bent upon living upto its evil reputation. In a short time the loosened waters thattrickled through the sleeping ice-fields greased the foundations uponwhich they lay. Jackson Glacier roused itself, then began to glideforward like a ship upon its ways. First there came the usualpremonitory explosions--the sound of subterranean blasts as the icecracked, gave way, and shifted to the weight above; echoes filled thesodden valley with memories of the summer months. It was as if theseasons had changed, as if the zodiacal procession had been thrown intoconfusion. The frozen surface of the Salmon was inundated; water fourfeet deep in some places ran over it.

  The general wonder at this occurrence changed to consternation when itwas seen that the glacier acted like a battering-ram of stupendoussize, buckling the river ice in front of it as if ice were made ofpaper. That seven-foot armor was crushed, broken into a thousandfragments, which threatened to choke the stream. A half-mile below thebridge site the Salmon was pinched as if between two jaws; its smoothsurface was rapidly turned into an indescribable jumble of up-endedcakes.

  When a fortnight had passed O'Neil began to fear that this movementwould go on until the channel had been closed as by a huge slidingdoor. In that case the rising waters would quickly wipe out all tracesof his work. Such a crumpling and shifting of the ice had neveroccurred before--at least, not within fifty years, as the alder andcottonwood growth on the east bank showed; but nothing seemedimpossible, no prank too grimly grotesque for Nature to play in thissolitude. O'Neil felt that his own ingenuity was quite unequal to thetask of combating this peril. Set against forces so tremendous andarbitrary human invention seemed dwarfed to a pitiable insignificance.

  Day after day he watched the progress of that white palisade; day afterday he scanned the heavens for a sign of change, for out of the skyalone could come his deliverance. Hourly tests were made at the bridgesite, lest the ice should give way before the pressure from below andby moving up-stream destroy the intricate pattern of piling which wasbeing driven to support the steelwork. But day after day the snowscontinued to melt and the rain to fall. Two rivers were now boilingpast the camp, one hidden deep, the other a shallow torrent which ranupon a bed of ice. The valley was rent by the sounds of the glacier'ssnail-like progress.

  Then, without apparent cause, the seasons fell into order again, themercury dropped, the surface-water disappeared, the country was sheetedwith a glittering crust over which men walked, leaving no trace offootprints. Jackson became silent: once again the wind blew cold fromout of the funnel-mouth and the bridge-builders threshed their arms tostart their blood. But the glacier face had advanced four hundred feetfrom its position in August; it had narrowed the Salmon by fullyone-half its width.

  Fortunately, the bridge had suffered no damage as yet, and no oneforesaw the effect which these altered conditions were to have.

  The actual erection of steelwork was impossible during the coldestmonths; Parker had planned only to rush the piers, abutments, andfalse-work to completion so that he could take advantage of the mildspring weather preceding the break-up. The execution of this plan wasin itself an unparalleled undertaking, making it necessary to hiredouble crews of picked men. Yet, as the weeks wore into months theintricate details were wrought out one by one, and preparations werecompleted for the great race.

  Late in March Dan Appleton went to the front, taking with him his wifeand his sister, for whom O'Neil had thoughtfully prepared suitableliving-quarters. The girls were as hungry as Dan to have a part in thedeciding struggle, or at least to see it close at hand, for the spiritof those engaged in the work had entered them also. Life at Omar oflate had been rather uneventful, and they looked forward with pleasureto a renewal of those companionable relations which had made the summermonths so, full of interest and delight. But they were disappointed.Life at the end of the line they found to be a very grim, a veryearnest, and in some respects an extremely disagreeable affair: thefeverish, unceasing activity of their friends left no time forcompanionship or recreation of any sort. More and more they, too, cameto feel the sense of haste and strain pervading the whole army ofworkers, the weight of responsibility that bore upon the commander.

  Dan became almost a stranger to them, and when they saw him he wasobsessed by vital issues. Mellen was gruff and irritable: Parker in hispreoccupation ignored everything but his duties. Of all their formercomrades O'Neil alone seemed aware of their presence. But behind hissmile they saw the lurking worries; in his eyes was an abstraction theycould not penetrate, in his bearing the fatigue of a man tried to thebreaking-point.

  To Eliza there was a certain joy merely in being near the man sheloved, even though she could not help being
hurt by his apparentindifference. The long weeks without sight of him had deepened herfeeling, and she had turned for relief to the writing of her book--thenatural outlet for her repressed emotions. Into its pages she hadpoured all her passion, all her yearning, and she had written with anintimate understanding of O'Neil's ambitions and aims which later gavethe story its unique success as an epic of financial romance.

  Hers was a nature which could not be content with idleness. She took upthe work that she and Natalie had begun, devoting herself unobtrusivelyyet effectively to making O'Neil comfortable. It was a labor of love,done with no expectation of reward; it thrilled her, filling her withmingled sadness and satisfaction. But if Murray noticed the improvementin his surroundings, which she sometimes doubted, he evidentlyattributed it to a sudden access of zeal on the part of Ben, for hemade no comment. Whether or not she wished him to see and understandshe could hardly tell. Somehow his unobservant, masculine acceptance ofthings better and worse appealed to the woman in her. She slipped intoO'Neil's quarters during his absence, and slipped out again quietly;she learned to know his ways, his peculiarities; she found herselfcaressing and talking to his personal belongings as if they could hearand understand. She conducted long conversations with the objects onhis bureau. One morning Ben entered unexpectedly to surprise her in theact of kissing Murray's shaving-mirror as if it still preserved theimage of its owner's face, after which she banished the cook-boyutterly and performed his duties with her own hands.

  Of course, discovery was inevitable. At last O'Neil stumbled in uponher in the midst of her task, and, questioning her, read the truth fromher blushes and her incoherent attempts at explanation.

  "So! You're the one who has been doing this!" he exclaimed, in frankastonishment. "And I've been tipping Benny for his thoughtfulness allthis time! The rascal has made enough to retire rich."

  "He seemed not to understand his duties very well, so I took charge.But you had no business to catch me!" The flush died from Eliza'scheeks, and she faced him with thoroughly feminine indignation.

  "I can't let you go on with this," said Murray. "_I_ ought to be doingsomething for YOU."

  But the girl flared up defiantly. "I love it. I'll do it, no matter ifyou lock me out. I'm not on the pay-roll, you know, so you have noauthority over me--none at all!"

  His eyes roved around the room, and for the first time he fully took inthe changes her hands had wrought.

  "My dear child, it's very nice to be spoiled this way and haveeverything neat and clean, but--it embarrasses me dreadfully to haveyou saddled with the sordid work--"

  "It isn't sordid, and--what brought you home at this hour, anyhow?" shedemanded.

  O'Neil's smile gave place to an anxious frown.

  "The ice is rising, and--"

  "Rising?"

  "Yes. Our old enemy Jackson Glacier is causing us trouble again. Thatjam of broken ice in front of it is backing up the water--there's morerunning now, and the ice is lifting. It's lifting the false-work withit, pulling the piles out of the river-bottom like splinters out of asore hand."

  "That's pretty bad, isn't it?"

  "It certainly is. It threatens to throw everything out of alignment andprevent us from laying the steel if we don't check it."

  "Check it!" cried Eliza. "How can you check a thing like that?"

  "Easily enough, if we can spare the hands--by cutting away the icewhere it is frozen to the piles, so that it won't lift them with it.The trouble is to get men enough--you see, the ice is nine feet thicknow. I've set every man to work with axes and chisels and steam-points,and I came up to telephone Slater for more help. We'll have to workfast, night and day."

  "There's nobody left in Omar," Eliza said, quickly.

  "I know. Tom's going to gather all he can at Cortez and Hope and rushthem out here. Our task is to keep the ice cut away until help arrives."

  "I suppose it's too late in the season to repair any serious damage?"

  "Exactly. If you care to go back with me you can see what we're doing."As they set off for the bridge site Murray looked down at Eliza,striding man-like beside him, with something of affectionateappreciation in his eyes, and said humbly: "It was careless of me notto see what you have been doing for me all this time. My only excuse isthat I've been driven half mad with other things. I--haven't time tothink of myself."

  "All housekeepers have a thankless task," laughed Eliza.

  When they reached the river-bank she saw everything apparently just aswhen she had last seen it. "Why, it's not as bad as I imagined!" sheexclaimed. "I thought I'd find everything going to smash."

  "Oh, there's nothing spectacular about it. There seldom is aboutserious mishaps in this business. The ice has risen only an inch ormore so far, but the very slowness and sureness of it is what'salarming. It shows that the water is backing up, and as the flowincreases the rise of the ice will quicken. If it starts to move up ordown stream, we're lost."

  There was ample evidence that the menace was thoroughly understood, forthe whole day shift was toiling at the ice, chopping it, thawing it,shoveling it away, although its tremendous thickness made their effortsseem puerile. Everywhere there was manifested a frantic haste, a grim,strained eagerness that was full of ominous meaning.

  All that day Eliza watched the unequal struggle, and in the evening Danbrought her reports that were far from reassuring. The relentlessmovement showed no sign of ceasing. When she retired that night shesought ease from her anxiety in a prayer that was half a petition forO'Neil's success and half an exceedingly full and frank confession ofher love for him. Outside, beneath the glare of torches and hastilystrung incandescents, a weary army toiled stubbornly, digging, gouging,chopping at the foot of the towering wall of timbers which stretchedacross the Salmon. In the north the aurora borealis played brilliantlyas if to light a council of the gods.

  On the following day "Happy Tom" arrived with fifty men.

  "I got the last mother's son I could find," he explained, as he warmedhimself at O'Neil's stove.

  "Did you go to Hope?"

  "I did, and I saw the splavvus, himself."

  "Gordon?"

  "He's worse than we thought." Tom tapped his shining foreheadsignificantly. "Loft to let!"

  "What--insane?"

  "Nothing but echoes in his dome. The town's as empty as his bonnet too,and the streets are full of snow. It's a sight!"

  "Tell me about Mrs. Gordon."

  "She's quite a person," said Slater, slowly. "She surprised me. She'sthere, alone with him and a watchman. She does all the work, even toLUGGING in the wood and coal--he's too busy to help--but she won'tleave him. She told me that Dan and Natalie wanted her to come overhere, but she couldn't bring herself to do it or to let them assist inany way. Gordon spends all his time at his desk, promoting, writing adsand prospectuses. He's got a grand scheme. He's found that 'HopeConsolidated' is full of rich ore, but the trouble is in getting itout; so he's working on a new process of extraction. It's a wonderfulprocess--you'd never guess what it is. He SMOKES it out! He says all heneeds is plenty of smoke. That bothered him until he hit on the idea ofburning feathers. Now he's planning to raise ducks, because they've gotso much down. Isn't that the limit? She'll have to fit him into apadded cell sooner or later."

  "Poor devil!" said O'Neil. "I'm sorry. He had an unusual mind."

  Slater sniffed. "I think it's pretty soft for him, myself. He's madebetter than a stand-off--he lost his memory, but he saved his skin.It's funny how some men can't fall: if they slip on a banana-peelsomebody shoves a cushion under 'em before they 'light. _I_ never gotthe best of anything. If I dropped asleep in church my wife woulddivorce me and I'd go to the electric chair. Gordon robs widows andorphans, right and left, then ends up with a loving woman to take careof him in his old age. Why, if I even robbed a blind puppy of a biscuitI'd leave a thumb-print on his ear, or the dog's mother would turn outto be a bloodhound. Anyhow, I'd spend MY declining years nestled up toa rock-pile, with a mallet in my mit, and a low-browed g
entlemanscowling at me from the top of a wall. He'd lean on his shotgun andsay, 'Hurry up, Fatty; it's getting late and there's a ton of oakum topick.' It just goes to show that some of us is born behind the game andnever get even, while others, like Gordon, quit winner no matter howmuch they lose." Having relieved himself of this fervid homily, "HappyTom" unrolled a package of gum and thrust three sticks into his mouth."Speaking of bad luck," he continued, "when are you going to getmarried, Murray?"

  O'Neil started. "Why--never. It isn't the same kind of proposition asbuilding a bridge, you know. There's a little matter of youth and goodlooks that counts considerably in the marriage business. No woman wouldhave an old chap like me."

  Slater took a mournful inventory of his chief's person, then saiddoubtfully: "You MIGHT put it over, Murray. I ain't strictly handsome,myself, but I did."

  As O'Neil slipped into his fur coat, after the fat man had slouchedout, he caught sight of himself in the glass of his bureau and paused.He leaned forward and studied the care-worn countenance that peeredforth at him, then shook his head. He saw that the hair was growinggrayer; that the face was very plain, and--yes, unquestionably, it wasno longer youthful. Of course, he didn't feel old, but the evidencethat he was so admitted of no disproof, and it was evidence of a sortwhich no woman could disregard. He turned from the glass with a qualmof disgust at his weakness in allowing himself to be influenced in theslightest by Tom's suggestion.

  For a week the ice rose slowly, a foot a day, and in spite of thegreatest watchfulness it took the false-work with it here and there.But concentrated effort at the critical points saved the structure fromserious injury. Then the jam in front of Jackson Glacier went out, atleast in part, and the ice began to fall. Down it settled, smoothly,swiftly, until it rested once more upon the shores. It was still asfirm as in midwinter, and showed no sign of breaking; nor had it moveddown-stream a hair's breadth. O'Neil gathered his forces for the finalonslaught.