Public-domain ebook
The ice goes out
Language: en342 downloads on Project Gutenberg
Subjects
In: Short Stories·Crime, Thrillers and Mystery·Adventure
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #74113.
The opening · free to read
“Enough,” he muttered, “to buy twenty ice pool chances. This year I’m going to win! Each year I’ve come nearer; each year the pool has been larger, but this year I win!”
“Don’t be too sure,” Atridge, his partner, observed.
Leach stretched himself and stepped outside. The air was almost balmy; the sky a deep blue; the mountains stood out sharp and clear. The sap was running in the willows, but then a willow is a foolish sort of tree and frequently buds too soon. The creek on which their cabin was located was frozen down to its gravel bottom. Leach looked into the sky and a peculiar hardness grew in the muscles around his jaw. A flock of geese was flying northward to some open body of salt water. A willow may be foolish, but geese know.
“This year,” he repeated, “I win the ice pool!”
Atridge did not speak for several seconds.
“I think,” he finally said, “I get you. But don’t you mean this year we win the ice pool?”
“Yes, if you want to go in on it--fifty-fifty. Otherwise I’m counting on you to keep your mouth shut!”
“I’m with you; what’s your plan?”
“We can’t lose. I’ve worked it all out. Last winter when you thought I was brooding and maybe had cabin fever I was figuring to win the pool!”
“What’s your plan?” Atridge repeated.
“Easy! Blow the safe in Welch’s store and go down the river ahead of the breakup. What chances has the marshal with the whole country flooded. I know of a dozen cabins in the lower country where we can hide out. Nobody will know whether we’ve wintered there or just arrived. Nobody knows we’re here! And we won’t show ourselves in the camp.”
Like most prospectors he spoke of any thriving town as a camp. Originally it had been a gold camp. From it a town had grown.
They camped on the outskirts of the community a week later. Excitement was on the increase. It was late April and money was coming from every part of the world. From traders and Eskimos in the North; from trappers, miners and business men throughout Alaska to men of poverty and wealth alike who chanced to be spending their declining years in warmer climates. To some it merely meant thumbing a bill off a large roll; to others it meant a sacrifice. Back of it all was the sporting blood of another day prompting them to take a chance; whispering that they had as good a chance to win as the next fellow. Loudly they might declare they knew they didn’t have a chance, but the faint voice of hope whispered--
“But, maybe you have.”
“From the lower river country, eh?” Welsh mused. Coming by messenger there was, of course, no date or postmark. “Hang it. I wished that Siwash had showed up in daytime. I’d like to have asked him some questions about the lower river country. Well, Leach, here’s hoping. Twenty chances will give you the edge on a lot of others, but the man with one chance often wins.”
He opened a safe, already crammed with gold dust and bills, added the contents of the poke, entered the name and times in a large book and filed the letter away.
Men were already working on the ice. In the center of the river a tripod had been erected. Just below it a wire had been strung across the river. On the town side the wire was connected to a clock as well as a siren. When the ice moved the tripod was carried against the wire. The clock registered the exact time and the scream of the siren proclaimed the ice was going. Then the camp went mad.
The last of the entries arrived that day. The contest was now in the lap of Mother Nature.
Con Welch’s safe was closed and locked until the great day when the winner appeared to collect. Robbery? The thought never occurred to any one in camp. There hadn’t been a theft in years. Escape was too difficult in a land where all movements of humanity must of necessity converge at the neck of the bottle--the steamers connecting the country with the outside world.
No telegraph line reached the camp, and yet, by a curiously circuitous method the miners learned that the ice was beginning to break far up the river. White Horse sent word to Vancouver and a Vancouver radio station broadcasted the news. A local set picked it up. The camp waited. A day or two; perhaps only a matter of hours, and the question would be settled.
A low boom startled Con Welch. He opened his eyes and listened.
“There goes the ice!” he cried, and rushed to the window. The tripod had not moved. He rubbed his eyes and waited. “Must have been dreaming. That sure sounded like ice breaking!”
He returned to the warmth of his blankets and dozed off. At six o’clock his telephone rang. A voice came crisply over the wire:
“Con, this is Kenmore speaking. How much money did you have in that safe?”
“Roughly, twenty-five thousand dollars. Why?”
“She’s been blown. Get down here as quick as you can!”
A mob had surrounded his store when Con Welch arrived. Each man had made his guess on when the ice would go out. Each felt himself robbed of twenty-five thousand dollars. The men buzzed like hornets and they were as greatly aroused.
“I’ve got a dozen men circling the camp,” Kenmore, the marshal, explained. “If they’ve taken a trail out of camp we’ll catch them! Your place ain’t so badly wrecked as it looks. The job was done by men who know how to use powder, but don’t know much about safes!”
Con nodded.
“Half the men in camp can use powder!”
Even as they talked a deputy hurried up.
“We’ve found a trail. It ain’t much, but they went out over the ice. There’s at least two of em!”
Twenty men were standing about, ready for the trail and spoiling for a chance to take part, backed by authority. Kenmore picked his men.
“We’ll travel light,” he announced, “and have others follow us up with grub. We’re taking to the ice before she goes!”
They fairly raced down the frozen surface. A half hour gained now was equal to several hours hard work once the ice was gone.
An hour later they caught the scream of a siren behind them. It was a sound that never ceased to thrill them. Other whistles in camp took it up and with it came the ringing of bells and the crack of pistols and rifles.
“I wonder who won,” a deputy wondered.
“It won’t make any difference,” Kenmore replied, “if we don’t overhaul the crooks!”
Something cracked ahead of them. They ran swiftly and leaped an opening in the ice. Water began to pour through, spreading slowly over the smooth surface. It would be a tough job, returning. An hour later they reached Boulder Creek and Kenmore threw up his hands and groaned. “They knew what they were doing. Timed things just right. We’ve got to quit the ice!”
“There’s a bend in the river,” one of them shouted. “If we cut across it will save something!”
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