The Iron Trail. Rex Beach
a while. I was an awful fool."
"Education!"
"Now it's my ambition to get settled and have her with me. I haven't had a good laugh, a hearty meal, or a Christian impulse since I left her."
"What did she do with her half of the fortune?"
"Invested it wisely and went to work. I bought little round celluloid disks with mine; she bought land of some sort with hers. She's a newspaper woman, and the best in the world—or at least the best in Seattle. She wrote that big snow-slide story for The Review last fall. She tells 'em how to raise eight babies on seven dollars a week, or how to make a full set of library furniture out of three beer kegs, a packing-case, and an epileptic icebox. She runs the 'Domestic Economy' column; and she's the sweetest, the cleverest, the most stunning—"
Appleton's enthusiastic tribute ceased suddenly, for he saw that O'Neil was once more deaf and that his eyes were fixed dreamily upon the canon far ahead.
As the current quickened the progress of the little party became slower and more exhausting. Their destination seemed to retreat before them; the river wound back and forth in a maddening series of detours. Some of the float ice was large now, and these pieces rushed down upon them like charging horses, keeping them constantly on the alert to prevent disaster. It seemed impossible that such a flat country could afford so much fall. "Happy Tom" at length suggested that they tie up and pack the remaining miles overland, but O'Neil would not hear to this.
They had slept so little, their labors had been so heavy, that they were dumb and dull with fatigue when they finally reached the first bluffs and worked their boat through a low gorge where all the waters of the Salmon thrashed and icebergs galloped past like a pallid host in flight. Here they paused and stared with wondering eyes at what lay before; a chill, damp breath swept over them, and a mighty awe laid hold of their hearts.
"Come on!" said O'Neil. "Other men have gone through; we'll do the same."
On the evening of the sixth day a splintered, battered poling-boat with its seams open swung in to the bank where O'Neil's men were encamped, and its three occupants staggered out. They were gaunt and stiff and heavy-eyed. Even Tom Slater's full cheeks hung loose and flabby. But the leader was alert and buoyant; his face was calm, his eyes were smiling humorously.
"You'll take the men on to the coal-fields and finish the work," he told his boss packer later that night. "Appleton and I will start back to Cortez in the morning. When you have finished go to Juneau and see to the recording."
"Ain't that my luck?" murmured the dyspeptic. "Me for Kyak where there ain't a store, and my gum all wet."
"Chew it, paper and all," advised Appleton, cheerfully.
"Oh, the good has all gone out of it now," Slater explained.
"Meet me in Seattle on the fifteenth of next month," his employer directed.
"I'll be there if old 'Indy' spares me. But dyspepsia, with nothing to eat except beans and pork bosom, will probably lay me in my grave long before the fifteenth. However, I'll do my best. Now, do you want to know what I think of this proposition of yours?" He eyed his superior somberly.
"Sure; I want all the encouragement I can get, and your views are always inspiriting."
"Well, I think it's nothing more nor less than hydrophobia. These mosquitoes have given you the rabies and you need medical attention. You need it bad."
"Still, you'll help me, won't you?"
"Oh yes," said Tom, "I'll help you. But it's a pity to see a man go mad."
VII
THE DREAM
The clerk of the leading hotel in Seattle whirled his register about as a man deposited a weather-beaten war-bag on the marble floor and leaned over the counter to inquire:
"Is Murray O'Neil here?"
This question had been asked repeatedly within the last two hours, but heretofore by people totally different in appearance from the one who spoke now. The man behind the desk measured the stranger with a suspicious eye before answering. He saw a ragged, loose-hung, fat person of melancholy countenance, who was booted to the knee and chewing gum.
"Mr. O'Neil keeps a room here by the year," he replied, guardedly.
"Show me up!" said the new-comer as if advancing a challenge.
A smart reply was on the lips of the clerk, but something in the other's manner discouraged flippancy.
"You are a friend of Mr. O'Neil's?" he asked, politely.
"Friend? Um-m, no! I'm just him when he ain't around." In a loud tone he inquired of the girl at the news-stand, "Have you got any wintergreen gum?"
"Mr. O'Neil is not here."
The fat man stared at his informant accusingly, "Ain't this the fifteenth?" he asked.
"It is."
"Then he's here, all right!"
"Mr. O'Neil is not in," the clerk repeated, gazing fixedly over Mr. Slater's left shoulder.
"Well, I guess his room will do for me. I ain't particular."
"His room is occupied at present. If you care to wait you will find—"
Precisely what it was that he was to find Tom never learned, for at that moment the breath was driven out of his lungs by a tremendous whack, and he turned to behold Dr. Stanley Gray towering over him, an expansive smile upon his face.
"Look out!" Slater coughed, and seized his Adam's apple. "You made me swallow my cud." The two shook hands warmly.
"We've been expecting you, Tom," said the Doctor. "We're all here except Parker, and he wired he'd arrive to-morrow."
"Where's Murray?"
"He's around somewhere."
Slater turned a resentful, smoldering gaze upon the hotel clerk, and looked about him for a chair with a detachable leg, but the object of his regard disappeared abruptly behind the key-rack.
"This rat-brained party said he hadn't come."
"He arrived this morning, but we've barely seen him."
"I left Appleton in Juneau. He'll be down on the next boat."
"Appleton? Who's he?" Dr. Gray inquired.
"Oh, he's a new member of the order—initiated last month. He's learning to be a sleep-hater, like the rest of us. He's recording the right-of-way."
"What's in the air? None of us know. We didn't even know Murray's whereabouts—thought he was in Kyak, until he sounded the tocsin from New York. The other boys have quit their jobs and I've sold my practice."
"It's a railroad!"
Dr. Gray grinned. "Well! That's the tone I use when I break the news that it's a girl instead of a boy."
"It's a railroad," Slater repeated, "up the Salmon River!"
"Good Lord! What about those glaciers?"
"Oh, it ain't so much the glaciers and the floating icebergs and the raging chasms and the quaking tundra—Murray thinks he can overcome them—it's the mosquitoes and the Copper Trust that are going to figure in this enterprise. One of 'em will be the death of me, and the other will bust Murray, if he don't look out. Say, my neck is covered with bumps till it feels like a dog-collar of seed pearls."
"Do you think we'll have a fight?" asked the doctor, hopefully.
"A fight! It'll be the worst massacre since the Little Big Horn. We're surrounded