The Deserter | Page 8

some wilder blast,
a blinding white cloud came whirling from the depths of the nearest
gully and breaking like spray over the snow fence along the line. Not a
sign of life was visible. The tiny mounds in the villages of the
prairie-dogs seemed blocked and frozen; even the trusty sentinel had
"deserted post" and huddled with his fellows for warmth and shelter in
the bowels of the earth. Fluttering owl and skulking coyote, too, had
vanished from the face of nature. Timid antelope--fleetest coursers of
the prairie--and stolid horned cattle had gone, none knew whither, nor
cared to know until the "blizzard" had subsided. Two heavy engines
fought their way, panting, into the very teeth of the gale and slowly
wound the long train after them up-grade among the foot-hills of the
great plateau of the Rockies. Once in a while, when stopping for a
moment at some group of brown-painted sheds and earth-battened
shanties, the wind moaned and howled among the iron braces and
brake-chains beneath the car and made such mournful noise that it was
a relief to start once more and lose sound of its wailing in the general
rumble. As for the scenery, only as a picture of shiver-provoking
monotony and desolation would one care to take a second look.
And yet, some miles ahead, striving hard to reach the railway in time to
intercept this very train, a small battalion of cavalry was struggling
through the blasts, officers and men afoot and dragging their own
benumbed limbs and half-benumbed chargers through the drifts that lay
deep at the bottom of every "coulée." Some few soldiers remained in
saddle: they were too frozen to walk at all. Some few fell behind, and
would have thrown themselves flat upon the prairie in the lethargy that
is but premonition of death by freezing. Like men half deadened by
morphine, their rescue depended on heroic measures, humane in their
seeming brutality. Officers who at other times were all gentleness now
fell upon the hapless stragglers with kicks and blows. As the train drew
up at the platform of a station in mid-prairie, a horseman enveloped in
fur and frost and steam from his panting steed reined up beside the
leading engine and shouted to the occupants of the cab,--

"For God's sake hold on a few minutes. We've got a dozen frozen men
with us we must send on to Fort Warrener." And the train was held.
Meantime, those far to the rear in the sleeper knew nothing of what was
going on ahead. The car was warm and comfortable, and most of its
occupants were apparently appreciative of its shelter and coseyness in
contrast with the cheerless scene without. A motherly-looking woman
had produced her knitting, and was blithely clicking away at her
needles, while her enterprising son, a youth of four summers and
undaunted confidence in human nature, tacked up and down the aisle
and made impetuous incursions on the various sections by turns,
receiving such modified welcome as could be accorded features
streaked with mingled candy and cinders, and fingers whose propensity
to cling to whatsoever they touched was due no more to instincts of a
predatory nature than to the adhesive properties of the glucose which
formed so large a constituent of the confections he had been
industriously consuming since early morning. Four men playing whist
in the rearmost section, two or three commercial travellers, whose
intimacy with the porter and airs of easy proprietorship told of an
apparent controlling interest in the road, a young man of reserved
manners, reading in a section all by himself, a baby sleeping quietly
upon the seat opposite the two passengers first mentioned, and a
Maltese kitten curled up in the lap of one of them, completed the list of
occupants.
The proximity of the baby and the kitten furnishes strong presumptive
evidence of the sex and general condition of the two passengers
referred to, and renders detail superfluous. A baby rarely travels
without a woman, or a kitten with a woman already encumbered with a
baby. The baby belonged to the elder passenger, the kitten to the
younger. The one was a buxom matron, the other a slender maid. In
their ages there must have been a difference of fifteen years; in feature
there was still wider disparity. The elder was a fine-looking woman,
and one who prided herself upon the Junoesque proportions which she
occasionally exhibited in a stroll for exercise up and down the aisle.
Yet no one would call her a beauty. Her eyes were of a somewhat fishy
and uncertain blue; the lids were tinged with an unornamental pink that

told of irritation of the adjacent interior surface and of possible
irritability of temper. Her complexion was of that mottled type which is
so