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Show Told in the Way Station. The section foreman had a violin, and the telegraph operator could pick a few chords on a banjo. Had it not been for the evening visits of the foreman with his violin the operator would probably have become frantic with home-sickness. The prairie railroad station was lonesome enough even in summer, when freights ran in two and three sections, and farm machinery littered the platform. Then the operator had plenty to do besides copy train orders and keep his switch lamps clean. But in the winter, when the road to the village, a mile away, was blocked half the time, when traffic was light and passengers few, the eternal humming hum-ming of the wires became an almost unbearable unbear-able dirge. This particular stormy day had brought "Old John" Bentley and his bridge gang to the station. Bentley was a character, and his men were good fellows, and the operator greeted them profanely and joyfully. Their visit meant company for two or three days anyway, for the trestle against the gulch west of the station was shaky and needed attention. But this story is about Bentley, and was told by one of his men. Bentley started to tell it, but he didn't finish. Why Bentley's hair should be so white, and how his left hand and forearm had been butchered so were mysteries even to his bridge gang, Bentley had never spoken of either until that stormy night in the station, and then he left the story for Jackson to tell, which was perhaps better. For it was Jackson who unbuckled Bentley's belt from the trunk of the tree and lowered the unconscious, half-frozen half-frozen form to his companions, and it was he who sat by Bentley during the delirium of the following days. So he was probably better qualified to tell it anyway. "I guess he won't kick if I tell you boys," said Jackson. Jack-son. He'd 'a' told the story himself, but-well, but-well, I'll tell you." Bentley yawned, walked over to the window, win-dow, and looked out at the storm. It was fairly whistling outside. For a long time he stood there, listening to the howling wind and staring absently through the windows, now rapidly coating with ice. Finally he turned, walked over to the settee and sat down. "Any tobacco, Jackson?" Jackson pulled but his pouch, and Bentley, Bent-ley, holding his blackened brier in his mangled man-gled left hand, slowly filled the bowl. The operator finished checking up his way bills, booked them, and came out into the waiting room. "No. 3's laid up at Summit," he announced, an-nounced, as he made a draft on Jackson's tobacco pouch. "Guess you'll have to hold down the shack with me for a day or two, John. Bentley smoked silently for a few minutes. min-utes. Then he turned to Jackson. "It was a good deal like this that day, Jackson. You remember it?" Jackson nodded. "Twenty years ago tomorrow," continued Bentley musingly. He slowly pushed up his coat sleeve, unbuttoned the sleeve of his blue flannel shirt, and rolled it up. "Tomorrow's the anniversary of that," he said, as he held his mutilated hand toward the operator. The third and fourth Angers were gone, as was part of the palm, while along the wrist and hairy forearm ran a series of white indentations to where the flesh apparently had been torn out and roughly sewn back into place. "Just twenty years ago tomorrow. Birthday Birth-day present." "Bumpers?" asked the operator. "No, wolves," replied Bentley. He relapsed into silence again. The others said nothing, but waited as Bentley stared at the fire. "They were timber wolves," he finally resumed. re-sumed. "You've heard them, Jackson." Jackson nodded again. "I can see that lad now as he God, how it snowed. It soon blotted out the stains on the snow . crust. That's where I got gray. Twenty years. Well, I guess I'll trundle toward to-ward the house. Good night, boys." He buttoned his coat to the chin, jammed the hot, glowing tobacco down into the heel of his pipe, pulled, his cap well over his eyes, and faced the winter whirlwind. 'I don't know where Bentley first met the lad who was with him," began Johnson. "I kind 'a think though it was at college. When John was out of his head up there in the shack, he used to sing college songs and swear at Budge. I never asked him about that part of it. John was poking along, lonesomelike one day, when he ran square into the young fellow. "I beg your par well, Jack, you old skate, how are you, anyway?" says the lad., John stared at him a second or two. Then he stuck out his mit and grinned like an idiot. "Is that you, Budge? Well, I'll What you doing up here? Come on "n" have a drink." "Nix, Jack. I've cut it out. Say, what are you going to do for a month or two? I want to go up into the woods with my gun." "You're my man," says John, and they walked away, arm in arm, gabbing and laughing laugh-ing like a couple of kids. "Well, it didn't take them long to outfit. One morning they started for an old shack John had in mind up the Vermilion river. I never understood why John liked that place. It was pretty enough around there, as far as tnat goes, right at the foot of a bluff, with a trout stream near the door. But a man I looking for fur isn't paying much attention J to the landscape. r I "It was easy traveling 'up the river, and I they made the shack the afternoon of the second day. "I'm afraid we won't get much game' "Budge," said John, after they had been in camp for a day or two. "Hardly any signs of it in the woods or along the stream down, there. Plenty of wolves, too. Hear 'em I last night?" "I should say I did," replied Budge. "Pretty close, too, weren't they?" "Yes. They're hungry, I guess. You don't want to be caught after sunset. We'd better visit the traps together tomorrow." "Budge was seated on a bench, with a pan between his knees, industriously peeling potatoes. He looked up inquiringly, then laughed. "Afraid of them, Jack?" he asked. "Yes, I am," said John, seriously. "I know what the brutes will do when they are good and hungry." "All right, Jack", all right. Hope we won' have to say how-de-do to them, though." And Budge croaked away at some old song as he put the potatoes in the iron pot and hung it over the fire. The traps were empty going out the next day. John's number three, cleverly placed under the snow crust, with the bait over it, had had an occupant, but a few scraps of bloody hair were all that remained, and John I looked grave as he glanced at the tracks around the trap. Down by the beaver log-slide, log-slide, however, they found a big beaver, both front paws fast in the trap. It was nearly 2 o'clock when they reached the beaver lodges. It was dusk among the pines at five, and John hurriedly skinned the animal, rolled up the pelt and slung it over his shoulder. - - "Budge, we've got to hustle," said John, as he adjusted the straps over his shoulders. "It's getting late, and I don't like the looks of things." Budge laughed. He had seen nothing out of the way. But John had. There was a peculiar deadness to the air that foretold to him the approach of the snow, and he glanced apprehensively at the sky as they cut through the poplars and across the maple-covered ridge to the river. Mile after mile they trudged along, following fol-lowing the frozen stream to where the trail opened through the pines for the five mile cut to the shack. Suddenly John stopped. Faint and far away, but deadly, there came to his ears the cry of the pack. It was from down river.' The wolves had struck their trail. Budge heard it too, and his face was white as he looked at John. "Budge, they're after us. We've got to make that shack." John hurriedly threw from his shoulders the straps holding the wet beaver pelt and diopped it on the snow. "Here's the trail. For God's sake now, don't trip. Steer clear of the willows," said John as they turned into the pines. S On and on they sped. Once John, setting the pace through the gathering H gloom of the forest, tripped and crashed I against a tree. And little drops of blood trickled from a cut in his forehead on to his bright colored woolen coat. It was snowing now, but there was a light crust over the old snow, and their snow shoes sank but little as they fought for the two long miles that held between them and the shack. But louder and louder rang the yelp of the pack, as with heads down the the lean bodies outstretched in the greyhound grey-hound swing of the chase they followed the fresh scent of their quarry. John and Budge were racing for their lives now. Nearer and nearer, louder and louder, came the cry of the wolves. Suddenly it changed. The gray brutes had come in sight of the hunted men, and sharp and clear rang their "yap yap yow" as they leaped straight for their prey. "Budge, we can't make it. Here, take this tree," gasped John, after a hurried look over his shoulder. "Slip your snow shoes, quick." Budge did so"; then he balked. "John, you first," he said quietly. "Damn you, get up there," screamed John, and putting his arms under Budge, he fairly threw him into the low branches of the tree. The pack was on them now. John just had time to scramble into the lower branches when the wolves, five of them, snarling'and whimpering in their blood hunt, leaped for the tree. A crash, a scream of a human being be-ing in mortal fear, and Budge was in their midst. The branch had broken beneath him, and he had fallen headlong, right into the leaping, snarling pack. In a flash John's arm went out. "Here, Budge, up. Get' up," he cried hoarsely. "Grab my hand, quick." Budge, half dazed, with the teeth of one brute in his shoulder, struggled to his feet and grasped John's outstretched hand. As he did so there was a snarl, a streak of gray through the air, and the fangs of a' wolf were buried in John's arm. He tore it out, screaming in his madness and pain. But Budge was down again, and they were on him. "Shoot me, John. Don't let " John steadied himself, and wrenched out his revolver. "We found John about an hour afterwards, I guess. We heard the shooting and the yelping of those wolves away over at our camp. He had loosened his belt, strapped himself to the tree trunk, and fired the remaining re-maining cartridges of his revolver at the wolves. He killed two of them. We saw the other three slink off into the shadows as we came up. John's hair turned white that night." |
