Aladdin O'Brien/Chapter 16
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T first the way, lying through waist-high fir scrub, was pretty bad underfoot, but beyond was a stretch of fine timber, where the trees had done much to arrest the snow, and the going was not so severe. Aladdin calculated that he should make the distance in an hour and a half; and when the wood ended, he looked at his watch and found that the first mile, together with only twenty-five minutes, was behind him.
"That's the rate of an hour and a quarter, Troubles," he said. "And that's good time. Are you listening?"
But following the wood was a great open space of country pitched up from the surrounding levels, and naked to every fury of nature. Across that upland the wind blew a wicked gale, scarifying the tops of knolls to the brown, dead grass, and filling the hollows flush with snow. At times, to keep from being blown over, it was necessary to lean against the gusts. Aladdin was conscious of not making very rapid progress, but there was something exhilarating in the wildness, the bitter cold, and the roar of the wind; it had an effect as of sea thundering upon beach, great views from mountain-tops, black wild nights, the coming of thunder and freshness after intense heat, or any of the thousand and one vaster demonstrations of nature. Now and again Aladdin sang snatches of song:
A gallant knight
In sunshine and shadow
Journeyed long,
Singing a song,
In search of El Dorado.
Or from "The Mole of Marimolena":
Smote a path of molten gold across the blue,
Says, "There's many million men would have done the like again,
But you didn't, and, my man, there's hope for you.
For the old rotten Mole of Marimolena;
There's maybe some one there
That you're longing to treat fair,
On the dismal, woeful Mole of Marimolena."
And other deep-sea chanteys,—the one in which the pirate found the Lady in the C-a-a-bin and slivered off her head, or back to Red Renard, or further to his own campaign song, and furthest of all to the bad, bad young dog of a crow. Then he got quite out of breath, and pausing for a moment to catch it, noted for the first time the extreme bitterness of the cold. It stung the face like insects. "Woof!" he said. "And now for lost time."
Again he stepped out, but with each step the snow became deeper, and presently he floundered in to his waist. "Must be a ditch!" he said, turning a little to the right and exclaiming, "Thought so!" as the wading got shallower. Whereupon he stepped into a deep hole and fell. After plunging and plowing about, it was brought home to him that he had lost the path. Even at that the difficulty remained one of hard walking alone, for he had been familiar with that country since childhood, and knew the precise direction in which it was necessary for him to locomote. It was a pity that the only structure in the vicinity was an ancient and deserted house,—it lay just off there,—as he should have liked to have warmed himself by a good fire before going farther. He remembered that there were a partly preserved stove in the deserted house, broken laths, and naily boards, and swathes of curious old wall-papers, layer upon layer, which, dampening and rotting from the wall, hung raggedly down. He had once explored the house with Margaret, and it seemed almost wise to go to the place and make a fire. But on account of the delay involved and the approach of darkness, he discarded the notion, and, a little impatient at being badly used by a neighborhood he knew so well, struggled on.
"Troubles," he said, "what sort of a storm is this anyway? Did you ever see anything quite like it round here? Because I never did. It must be like those things they have out West, when millions of poor little baa-sheeps and horses and cattles freeze to death. I'd hate to be a horse out in this, but I wish I had one. I—"
If, as a child, you have ever slipped, though only an inch, while climbing over roofs, you will know that sudden, stabbing, sinking feeling that came to Aladdin and stopped the beating of his heart by the hairbreadth of a second. He had been proceeding chin on breast, and head bent against the wind, or he would have seen it before, for it was a notable landmark in that part of the world, and showed him that he had been making way, not toward his destination, but toward the wilderness.
He gazed up at the great black blasted pine, its waist the height of a tall tree, and its two lonely lightning-scathed and white arms stretched out like a malediction; and for a moment he had to take himself in hand. After a little he mastered the fear that had seized him.
"It's only a poor old lonely vegetable out in the cold," he said. "And it shows us exactly where we are and exactly which way we have to go."
He set himself right, and, with head lowered and hands clenched, again started on. But he was beginning to be very much bored, and sensible that his legs were not accustomed to being used so hard. Furthermore, there was a little difficulty—not by any means an insurmountable one—in steering straight, because of the constantly varying point of the compass in which the wind blew. He went on for a long time. . . .
He began to look for the high ground to decline, as it should, about now, if it was the high ground he took it for. "I ought to be getting somewhere," he said.
And, God help him! tired out, half frozen and very foot-sore, he was getting somewhere, for, glancing up, he again beheld the gigantic and demoniac shape of the blasted pine.
It is on prairies and among mountains, far from the habitations of men, that man is most readily terrified before nature, and not on the three-mile primrose way from a railway accident to a house-party. But for a moment cold terror struck at Aladdin like a serpent, and the marrow in his bones froze. Before he could succeed in reducing this awful feeling to one of acute anxiety alone, he had to talk to himself and explain things as to a child.
"Then it is true, Troubles, old man," he said, "about a person's tendency to go to the left. That's interesting, isn't it? But what do we care? Being gifted with a certain (flighty, it is true) intelligence, we will simply take pains, and every step pull a little to the right; and that will make us go straight. Come now-keep thinking about it-every step!"
As the end of the day approached, a lull came in the gale, and the snow fell less freely. The consequently widened horizon of vision was eminently comforting, and Aladdin's unpleasant feeling of anxiety almost disappeared.
Suddenly he was aware of a red horse.