The Daughter of a Magnate | Page 3

as possible. I know Mr. Glover pretty well. He
is all right, but he's been down here now a week without getting out of
his clothes and the river rising on him every hour. They've got every
grain bag between Salt Lake and Chicago and they're filling them with
sand and dumping them in where the river is cutting."
"Any danger of the bridge going?" asked the doctor.
"None in the world, but there's a lot of danger that the river will go.
That would leave the bridge hanging over dry land. The fight is to hold
the main channel where it belongs. They're getting rock over the bridge
from across the river and strengthening the approach for fear the diks
should give way. The track is busy every minute, so I couldn't make
much impression on Mr. Glover."
There was light talk of a deputation to the dike, followed by the

resignation of travellers, cards afterward, and ping-pong. With the
deepening of the night the rain fell harder, and the wind rising in gusts
drove it against the glass. When the women retired to their
compartments the train had been set over above the bridge where the
wind, now hard from the southeast, sung steadily around the car.
Gertrude Brock could not sleep. After being long awake she turned on
the light and looked at her watch; it was one o'clock. The wind made
her restless and the air in the stateroom had become oppressive. She
dressed and opened her door. The lights were very low and the car was
silent; all were asleep.
At the rear end she raised a window-shade. The night was lighted by
strange waves of lightning, and thunder rumbled in the distance
unceasingly. Where she sat she could see the sidings filled with cars,
and when a sharper flash lighted the back water of the lakes, vague
outlines of far-off bluffs beetled into the sky.
She drew the shade, for the continuous lightning added to her disquiet.
As she did so the rain drove harshly against the car and she retreated to
the other side. Feeling presently the coolness of the air she walked to
her stateroom for her Newmarket coat, and wrapping it about her, sunk
into a chair and closed her eyes. She had hardly fallen asleep when a
crash of thunder split the night and woke her. As it rolled angrily away
she quickly raised the window-curtain.
The heavens were frenzied. She looked toward the river. Electrical
flashes charging from end to end of the angry sky lighted the bridge,
reflected the black face of the river and paled flickering lights and
flaming torches where, on vanishing stretches of dike, an army of dim
figures, moving unceasingly, lent awe to the spectacle.
She could see smoke from the hurrying switch engines whirled
viciously up into the sweeping night and above her head the wind
screamed. A gale from the southwest was hurling the Spider against the
revetment that held the eastern shore and the day and the night gangs
together were reinforcing it. Where the dike gave under the terrific
pounding, or where swiftly boiling pools sucked under the heavy piling,

Glover's men were sinking fresh relays of mattresses and loading them
with stone.
At moments laden flat cars were pushed to the brink of the flood, and
men with picks and bars rose spirit-like out of black shadows to
scramble up their sides and dump rubble on the sunken brush. Other
men toiling in unending procession wheeled and slung sandbags upon
the revetment; others stirred crackling watchfires that leaped high into
the rain, and over all played the incessant lightning and the angry
thunder and the flying night.
She shut from her eyes the strangely moving sight, returned to her
compartment, closed her door and lay down. It was quieter within the
little room and the fury of the storm was less appalling.
Half dreaming as she lay, mountains shrouded in a deathly lightning
loomed wavering before her, and one, most terrible of all, she strove
unwillingly to climb. Up she struggled, clinging and slipping, a
cramping fear over all her senses, her ankles clutched in icy fetters,
until from above, an apparition, strange and threatening, pushed her,
screaming, and she swooned into an awful gulf.
"Gertrude! Gertrude! Wake up!" cried a frightened voice.
The car was rocking in the wind, and as Gertrude opened her door
Louise Donner stumbled terrified into her arms. "Did you hear that
awful, awful crash? I'm sure the car has been struck."
"No, no, Louise."
"It surely has been. Oh, let us waken the men at once, Gertrude; we
shall be killed!"
The two clung to one another. "I'm afraid to stay alone, Gertrude,"
sobbed her companion.
"Stay with me, Louise. Come." While they spoke the