The White Desert | Page 4

to his
suddenly comprehending eyes, rose before him in a long, steady sweep
of difficult grades, upward, steadily upward, with never a varying
downfall, with never a rest for the motor which must climb it. And this
was just the beginning! For Barry could see beyond.
Far in the distance he could make it out, a twisting, turning, almost
writhing thing, cutting into the side of the mountain, a jagged scar,
searing its way up the range in flights that seemed at times to run
almost perpendicular and which faded, only to reappear again, like the
trail of some gigantic cut-worm, mark above mark, as it circled the
smaller hills, cut into the higher ones, was lost at the edge of some
great beetling rock, only to reappear once more, hundreds of feet
overhead. The eyes of Barry Houston grew suddenly serious. He

reached into the toolbox, and bringing forth the jack, affixed the chains,
forgetting his usually cheery whistle, forgetting even to take notice
when an investigative jay scrambled out upon a dead aspen branch and
chattered at him. The true meaning of the villager's words had come at
last. The mountains were frowning now, instead of beckoning,
glowering instead of promising, threatening instead of luring. One by
one he locked the chains into place, and tossing the jack once more into
the tool-box, resumed his place at the wheel.
"A six per cent. grade if it's an inch!" he murmured. "And this is only
the beginning. Wonder what I'm stepping into?"
The answer came almost before the machine had warmed into action.
Once more the engine labored; nor was it until Barry had answered its
gasping plea by a shift to second gear that it strengthened again. The
grade was growing heavier; once Barry turned his head and stared with
the knowledge that far beneath him a few tiny buildings dotted what
seemed to be a space of ground as level as a floor. Dominion! And he
had barely passed outside its environs!
He settled more firmly in his seat and gripped hard at the steering
wheel. The turns had become shorter; more, Barry found himself
righting the machine with sudden jerks as the car rounded the short
curves where the front wheels seemed to hang momentarily above
oblivion, as the chasms stretched away to seemingly bottomless depths
beneath. Gradually, the severity of the grade had increased to ten, to
twelve and in short pitches to even eighteen and twenty per cent! For a
time the machine sang along in second, bucking the raises with almost
human persistence, finally, however, to gasp and break in the smooth
monotony of the exhaust, to miss, to strain and struggle vainly, then to
thunder on once more, as Houston pressed the gears into low and began
to watch the motormeter with anxious eyes. The mercury was rising;
another half-hour and the swish of steam told of a boiling radiator.
A stop, while the red, hissing water splattered from the radiator cock,
and the lifted hood gave the machine a chance to cool before
replenishment came from the murky, discolored stream of melted snow
water which churned beneath a sapling bridge. Panting and

light-headed from the altitude, Barry leaned against the machine for a
moment, then suddenly straightened to draw his coat tighter about him
and to raise the collar about his neck. The wind, whistling down from
above, was cold: something touched his face and melted there,--snow!
The engine was cool now. Barry leaped to the wheel and once more
began his struggle upward, a new seriousness upon him, a new
grimness apparent in the tightness of his lips. The tiny rivulets of the
road had given place to gushing streams; here and there a patch of snow
appeared in the highway; farther above, Barry could see that the white
was unbroken, save for the half-erased marks of the two cars which had
made the journey before him. The motor, like some refreshed animal,
roared with a new power and new energy, vibrant, confident, but the
spirit was not echoed by the man at the wheel. He was in the midst of a
fight that was new to him, a struggle against one of the mightiest things
that Nature can know, the backbone of the Rocky Mountains,--a
backbone which leered above him in threatening, vicious coldness,
which nowhere held surcease; it must be a battle to the end!
Up--up--up--the grades growing steadily heavier, the shifting clouds
enveloping him and causing him to stop at intervals and wait in
shivering impatience until they should clear and allow him once more
to continue the struggle. Grayness and sunshine flitted about him; one
moment his head was bowed against the sweep of a snow flurry,
driving straight against him from the higher peaks, the next the