The Iron Trail Part 32

"Yes. But it didn't take long. I 'phoned this morning that you were coming." He ran a critical eye over the place to see that its equipment was complete, then drew out their chairs for them.

A white-coated cook-boy served a luncheon in courses, the quality of which astonished the visitors, for there was soup, a roast, delicious vegetables, crisp salad, a camembert which O'Neil had imported for his private use, and his own particular blend of coffee.

The girls ate with appet.i.tes that rivaled those of the men in the mess-tent near by. Their presence in the heart of a great activity, the antic.i.p.ation of adventure to come, the electric atmosphere of haste and straining effort on every hand excited them. Eliza began to be less conscious of her secret intention, and Natalie showed a gaiety rare in her since the shadow of her mother's shame had fallen upon her life.

The boat crews were waiting when they had finished, and they were soon under way. A mile of comparatively slack water brought them out into one of the larger estuaries of the river, and there the long, uphill pull began. O'Neil had equipped his two companions with high rubber boots, which they were only too eager to try. As soon as they got ash.o.r.e they began to romp and play and splash through the shallows quite like unruly children. They spattered him mischievously, they tugged at the towing-ropes with a great show of a.s.sistance, they scampered ahead of the party, keeping him in a constant panic lest they meet with serious accident.

It was with no little relief that he gave the order to pitch camp some hours later. After sending them off to pick wild currants, with a grave warning to beware of bears, he saw to the preparations for the night.

They returned shortly with their hats filled and their lips stained; then, much to his disgust, they insisted upon straightening out his tent with their own hands. Once inside its low shelter, they gleefully sifted sand between his blankets and replaced his pillow with a rock; then they induced the cook to coil a wet string in his flapjack. When supper was over and the camp-fires of driftwood were crackling merrily, they fixed themselves comfortably where their feet would toast, and made him tell them stories until his eyes drooped with weariness.

It was late summer, and O'Neil had expected to find the glaciers less active than usual, but heavy rains in the interior and hot thawing weather along the coast had swelled the Salmon until many bergs clogged it, while the reverberations which rolled down the valley told him that both Garfield and Jackson were caving badly. It was not the safest time at which to approach the place, he reflected, but the girls had shown themselves nimble of foot, and he put aside his uneasiness.

Short though the miles had been and easy as the trip had proved, Eliza soon found herself wondering that it should be possible to penetrate this region at all. The snarling river, the charging icebergs, the caving banks, and the growing menace of that noisy gap ahead began to have their effect upon her and Natalie; and when the party finally rounded the point where Murray and Dan had caught their first glimpse of the lower glacier they paused with exclamations of amazement. They stood at the upper end of a gorge between low bluffs, and just across the hurrying flood lay the lower limit of the giant ice-field. The edge, perhaps six hundred feet distant, was sloping and mud-stained, for in its slow advance it had plowed a huge furrow, lifting boulders, trees, acres of soil upon its back. The very bluff through which the river had cut its bed was formed of the debris it had thrown off, and const.i.tuted a bulwark protecting its flank. Farther up-stream the slope, became steeper, then changed to a rugged perpendicular face showing marks of recent cleavage. This palisade extended on and on, around the nearest bend, following the contour of the Salmon as far as they could see. The sun was reflected from its myriad angles and facets in splendid iridescence. Mammoth caves and caverns gaped. In spots the ice was white, opaque; in other places it was a light cerulean blue which shaded into purple. Ribbons and faint striations meandered through it like the streaks in an agate. But what struck the beholders with overwhelming force was the tremendous, the unbelievable bulk of the whole slowly moving ma.s.s. It reared itself sheerly three hundred feet high, and along its foot the river hurried, dwarfed to an insignificant trickle. Here and there it leaned outward threateningly, bulging from the terrific weight behind; at other points the muddy flood recoiled from vast heaps which had slid downward and half dammed its current. Back of these piles the fresh cleavage showed dazzlingly.

On, upward, back into the untracked mountains it ran through mile upon mile of undulations, until at last it joined the ice-cap which weighted the plateau. As far as the eye could follow the river ahead it stood solidly. Across its entire face it was dripping; a thousand little rills and waterfalls ate into it, and over it swept a cool, dank breath.

The effect of the first view was overwhelming. Nothing upon the earth compares in majesty and menace to these dull-eyed monsters of bygone ages; nothing save the roots of mountains can serve to check them; nothing less than the ceaseless energy of mighty rivers can sweep away their shattered fragments.

Murray O'Neil had seen Jackson Glacier many times, but always he experienced the same feeling of awe, of personal insignificance, as when he first came stumbling up that gorge more than a year before.

For a long time the girls stood gazing without a word. They seemed to have forgotten his presence.

"Well?" he said at last.

"Isn't it BIG?" Natalie faltered, with round eyes. "Will it fall over on us?"

He shook his head. "The river is too wide for that, but when a particularly big ma.s.s drops it makes waves large enough to sweep everything before them. This bank on our right is sixty feet high, but I've seen it inundated."

Turning to Eliza, he inquired:

"What do you think of it?"

Her face as she met his was strangely glorified, her eyes were shining, her fingers tightly interlocked.

"I--I'd like to cry or--or swear," she said, uncertainly,

"Why, Eliza!" Natalie regarded her friend in shocked amazement, but Murray laughed.

"It affects people differently," he said. "I have men who refuse to make this trip. There's something about Jackson that frightens them--perhaps it is its nearness. You see, there's no other place on the globe where we pygmies dare come so close to a live glacier of this size."

"How can we go on?" Natalie asked. "We must work our boats along this bank. If the ice begins to crack anywhere near us I want you both to scamper up into the alders as fast as your rubber boots will carry you."

"What will you do?" Eliza eyed him curiously.

"Oh, I'll follow; never fear! If it's not too bad, I'll stay with the boats, of course. But we're not likely to have much difficulty at this season."

Eliza noted the intensity with which the boatmen were scanning the pa.s.sage ahead, and something in O'Neil's tone told her he was speaking with an a.s.surance he did not wholly feel.

"You have lost some men here, haven't you?" she asked.

"Yes. But the greater danger is in coming down. Then we have to get out in the current and take our chances."

"I'd like to do that!" Her lips were parted, her eyes were glowing, but Natalie gave a little cry of dismay.

"It's an utterly new sensation," O'Neil admitted. "I've been thinking of sending you up across the moraine, but the trail is bad, and you might get lost among the alders--"

"And miss any part of this! I wouldn't do it for worlds." Eliza's enthusiasm was irresistible, and the expedition was soon under way again.

Progress was more difficult now, for the river-sh.o.r.e was paved with smooth, round stones which rolled under foot, and the boats required extreme attention in the swift current. The farther they proceeded, the more the ice wall opposite increased in height, until at last it shut off the mountains behind. Then as they rounded the first bend a new prospect unfolded itself. The size of Jackson became even more apparent; the gravel bank under which they crept was steeper and higher also. In places it was undercut by the action of the waves which periodically surged across. At such points Murray sent his charges hurrying on ahead, while he and his men tracked the boats after them.

In time they found themselves opposite the backbone of the glacier, where the Salmon gnawed at the foot of a frozen cliff of prodigious height. And now, although there had been no cause for apprehension beyond an occasional rumble far back or a splitting crack from near at hand, the men a.s.sumed an att.i.tude of strained watchfulness and kept their faces turned to the left. They walked quietly, as if they felt themselves in some appalling presence.

At last there came a sound like that of a cannon-shot, and far ahead of them a fragment loosened itself and went plunging downward. Although it appeared small, a ridge promptly leaped out from beneath the splash and came racing down the river's bosom toward them.

"Better go up a bit," O'Neil called to his charges.

The men at the ends of the tow-lines scrambled part way up the shelving beach and braced themselves, then wrapped the ropes about their waists, like anchormen on a tug-of-war team. Their companions waded into the flood and fended the boats off the rocks.

The wave came swiftly, lifting the skiffs high upon the bank, then it sucked them back amid a tangle of arms and legs. A portion of the river-bottom suddenly bared itself and as suddenly was submerged again.

The boats plunged and rolled and beat themselves upon the sh.o.r.e, wrenching the anchormen from their posts. They were half filled with water too, but the wave had pa.s.sed and was scudding away down-stream.

Eliza Appleton came stumbling back over the rock-strewn bank, for during that first mad plunge she had seen O'Neil go down beneath one of the rearing craft. A man was helping him out.

"Nothing but my ankle!" he rea.s.sured her when she reached his side. "I was dragged a bit and jammed among the boulders." He sank down, and his lips were white with pain, but his gray eyes smiled bravely. The boatman removed his chief's boot and fell to rubbing the injury, while the girls looked on helplessly.

"Come, come! We can't stay here," Murray told them. He drew on the boot again to check the swelling.

"Can you walk?" they asked him, anxiously.

"Certainly! Two feet are really unnecessary. A man can get along nearly as well on one." He hurried his men back to their tasks, and managed to limp after them, although the effort brought beads of sweat to his lips and brow.

It was well that he insisted upon haste, for they had not gone far when the glacier broke abreast of the spot they had just left. There came a rending crack, terrifying in its loudness; a tremendous tower of ice separated itself from the main body, leaned slowly outward, then roared downward, falling in a solid piece like a sky-sc.r.a.per undermined. Not until the arc described by its summit had reached the river's surface did it shiver itself. Then there was a burst as of an exploded mine.

The saffron waters of the Salmon shot upward until they topped the main rampart, and there separated into a cloud of spray which rained down in a deluge. Out from the fallen ma.s.s rushed a billow which gushed across the channel, thrashed against the high bank, then inundated it until the alder thickets on its crest whipped their tips madly. A giant charge of fragments of every size flew far out across the flats or lashed the waters to further anger in its fall.

The prostrate column lay like a wing-dam, half across the stream, and over it the Salmon piled itself. Disintegration followed; bergs heaved themselves into sight and went rolling and lunging after the billow which was rushing down-stream with the speed of a locomotive. They ground and clashed together in furious confusion as the river spun them; the greater ones up-ended themselves, casting off muddy cascades.

From the depths of the flood came a grinding and crunching as ice met rock.

Spellbound, the girls watched that first wave go tearing out of sight, filling the river bank-full. With exclamations of wonder, they saw the imprisoned waters break the huge dam to pieces. Finally the last shattered fragment was hurried out of sight, the flood poured past unhampered, and overhead the glacier towered silent, unchanged, staring at them balefully like a blind man with filmed eyes. There remained nothing but a gleaming scar to show where the cataclysm had originated.

"If I'd known the river was so high I'd never have brought you," O'Neil told them. "It's fortunate we happened to be above that break. You see, the waves can't run up against the current." He turned to his men and spurred them on.

It was not until the travelers had reached the camp at the bridge site that all the wonders of this region became apparent. Then the two girls, in spite of their fatigue, spent the late afternoon sight-seeing. At this point they were able to gain a comprehensive view; for at their backs lay Jackson Glacier, which they had just pa.s.sed, and directly fronting them, across a placid lake, was Garfield, even larger and more impressive than its mate. Thirty, forty miles it ran back, broadening into a frozen sea out of which scarred mountain peaks rose like bleak islands, and on beyond the range of vision was still more ice.

They were surrounded by ragged ramparts. The Salmon River ran through a broken chalice formed by the encircling hills, and over the rim of the bowl or through its cracks peered other and smaller ice bodies. The lake at its bottom was filled by as strange a navy as ever sailed the sea; for the ships were bergs, and they followed each other in senseless, ceaseless manoeuvers, towed by the currents which swept through from the cataract at its upper end. They formed long battle-lines, they a.s.sembled into flotillas, they filed about the circ.u.mference of a devil's whirlpool at the foot of the rapids, gyrating, bobbing, bowing until crowded out by the pressure of their rivals. Some of them were grounded, like hulks defeated in previous encounters, and along the guardian bar which imprisoned them at the outlet of the lake others were huddled, a ma.s.s of slowly dissolving wreckage.

O'Neil was helped into camp, and when his boot had been cut away he sent news of his arrival to Dan, who came like an eager bridegroom.