The Rim of the Desert | Page 9

"he gave a quick bark
and ran with short yelps towards a clump of young trees a few yards off.
The rim of a drift formed a partial windbreak, but he had only a low
bough to cover him,--and the temperature,--along those ice-peaks--"
His voice failed. There was another speaking silence. It was as though
these men, having followed all those hundreds of miles over tundra and
mountains, through thaw and frost, felt with him in that moment the
heart-breaking futility of his pursuit. "I tried my best," he added. "I

guess you all know that, but--I was too late."
The warning blast of an automobile cut the stillness, and the machine
stopped in front of the clubhouse, but no one at the table noticed the
interruption.
Then Banks said, in his high key: "But you hitched his dogs up with
yours, the ones that were fit, and brought him through to Seward. You
saw him buried. Thank you for that."
Feversham cleared his throat and reached for the decanter, "Think of
it!" he exclaimed. "A man like that, lost on a main traveled
thoroughfare! But the toll will go on every year until we have a railroad.
Here's to that road, gentlemen. Here's to the Alaska Midway and Home
Rule."
The toast was responded to, and it was followed by others. But Tisdale
had left his place to step through the open door to the balcony.
Presently Foster joined him. They stood for an interval smoking and
taking in those small night sounds for which long intimacy with Nature
teaches a man to listen; the distant voice of running water; the teasing
note of the breeze; the complaint of a balsam-laden bough; the restless
stir of unseen wings; the patter of diminutive feet. A wooded point that
formed the horn of a bay was etched in black on the silver lake; then
suddenly the moon illumined the horizon and, rising over a stencilled
crest of the Cascades, stretched her golden path to the shore below
them. Both these men, watching it, saw that other trail reaching white,
limitless, hard as steel through the Alaska solitudes.
"At Seward," said Foster at last, "you received orders by cable detailing
you to a season in the Matanuska fields; but before you took your party
in, you sent a force of men back to the Aurora to finish Weatherbee's
work and begin operations. And the diverting of that stream exposed
gravels that are going to make you rich. You deserve it. I grant that. It's
your compensation; but just the same it gives a sharper edge to poor
Weatherbee's luck."
Tisdale swung around. "See here, Foster, I want you to know I should

have considered that money as a loan if David had lived. If he had
lived--and recovered--I should have made him take back that half
interest in the Aurora. You've got to believe that; and I would be ready
to do as much for his wife, if she had treated him differently. But she
wrecked his life. I hold her responsible."
Foster was silent.
"Think of it!" Hollis went on. "The shame of it! All those years while
he faced privation, the worst kind, tramping Alaska trails, panning in
icy streams, sluicing, digging sometimes like any common laborer,
wintering in shacks, she was living in luxury down here. He never
made a promising discovery that he wasn't forced to sell. She spent his
money faster than he made it; kept him handicapped. And all she ever
gave him was a friendly letter now and then, full of herself and the gay
life she led, and showing clearly how happy she could be without him.
Think of it, Foster!" His voice deepened and caught its vibrant quality.
"A fine fellow like Weatherbee; so reliable, so great in a hard place.
How could she have treated him as she did? Damn it! How could he
have thrown himself away like that, for a feather-headed woman?"
Foster knocked the ash from the end of his cigar. "You don't know her,"
he answered. "If you did, you wouldn't put it in that way." He smiled a
little and looked off at the golden path on the lake. "So," he said after a
moment, and his glance returned to meet Tisdale's squarely, "she has
absolutely nothing now but that tract of unimproved desert on the other
side of the Cascades."

CHAPTER II
THE QUESTION
Sometime, high on a mountain slope, a cross current of air, or perhaps a
tremor of the surface occasioned far off, starts the small snow-cap, that
sliding, halting, impelled forward again, always accumulating,
gathering momentum, finally becomes the irresistible avalanche. So

Marcia Feversham, the following morning, gave the first slight impetus
to the question that eventually menaced Tisdale with swift destruction.
She was not