Chapter XIII: The Wind on the Barren

Jim Todhunter only pretended to sleep, but he lay very still for hours. His mind and heart were prey to bitter and humiliating thoughts and emotions. The girl had believed him guilty of shooting from cover at an unarmed man! It was a thing which her brother Mark would not have suspected him of for a moment. And she had continued to believe it of him after he had denied it. So far, she had considered him a coward, a would-be murderer, and a liar. But that had not been enough. She had then lied to him; and when he had believed her and taken to the winter wilderness to draw suspicion away from her and upon himself, she had considered him not only a blackguard but a fool. And he had thought her his friend! He had thought that she knew him! It was too damn much! But for his wounded leg, she would never see him again. As it was, he would avoid her as much as possible. He would return to the glen, remain there until the cut was healed, and then go north to the trapping country. In the meantime he would make the homeward trip without any help from her.

Before midnight, he sat up and cautiously prepared for his journey by the low, red glow of the fallen fire. First of all, he ate the few slices of fried bacon and toasted bread which had been left over from supper. These were frozen and he thawed them at the embers. He helped the heavy food down with a few mouthfuls of bitter cold tea. After examining the bandages of his injured leg and finding that the blood had ceased to flow, he cut one of his blankets in two, wrapped a half securely around the leg from hip to ankle and bound it with the thongs from his snowshoes. He rolled his blankets lengthwise, looped the roll across his shoulder like a bandolier and tied the ends. He slung his rifle, stuffed his pockets with food, pulled his mittens high about his wrists and his fur cap low about his ears and then crawled away from the low fire and the sleeping girl and dogs. He went on his hands and his right knee, dragging his bulkily swathed leg stiffly and heavily. His arms sank to the elbows, sometimes to the shoulders. The dry snow puffed up in his face at every movement of his arms, almost choking him. He followed his old tracks back to the edge of the barren, there found Flora's trail and took to the open. The air was still and cold.

Jim back-tracked along Flora's trail as fast as he could without straining his dragging leg or overheating himself. In spite of his bitterness and indignation, he kept his mind cool and clear on the job in hand. He paused now and then to clear eyes and nose of snow. He lay too low, and was too warmly clad and busily engaged to feel the cold. He kept to the track without a fault. Once, before dawn, he rested for twenty minutes and smoked a couple of cigarettes. By sunrise he within fifty yards of the edge of the forest. He staggered upright on a straight leg and looked around him; and at the same moment he heard a gust of wind strike and moan among the black spires of the forest in front, felt its icy breath on his face and saw the dry snow around him rise and run in a blinding cloud. That puff of wind and blown snow passed and fell in a second, and he saw a clump of stunted spruces a few rods away on his right. Then a bright idea came to him and he sank to hands and knee again and crawled off on a new course. He was determined to regain the glen without any help from the girl who had believed him to be a coward and a liar; he knew that his only chance of accomplishing this lay in eluding pursuit, for she could travel three yards to his one, and in this sudden draught of wind from the rising sun--the promise of a windy day--he saw his way to tricking her. In the open, with a wind blowing, even his trench-like spoor would soon be drifted full and utterly obliterated, but not so in the shelter of the thick timber. So he crawled for the little clump of bushy spruces. He would let her go blindly by, and then follow and complete his journey in his own time. He would show her that, even when crippled, he needed no assistance from one who thought of him as she did. He crawled to the center of the stiff tangle and dug deep in the snow to the very roots of the spruces. Here was a snug retreat, a veritable den, walled with snow and brush and dead fern and roofed with several layers of wide boughs. He unrolled his blankets; and then a sudden dizziness assailed him. He fought against it for a few seconds, extended his wounded leg and drew the blankets about him, sagged lower, and lay still and unconscious.

Flora Ducat awoke at dawn, built up the fire with dry twigs, greeted the bounding dogs and then discovered Jim's absence. Gone! Gone with rifle, blankets, and wounded leg! Her eyes tingled with tears, her heart faltered, and her cheeks went gray at the implication. He would risk bleeding to death, or freezing in the snow, rather than remain in her company or accept her assistance. As she stared at the deep trail he had made, the tears suddenly formed and dimmed her sight.

"He has crawled off like a wounded animal," she whispered.

She tossed the crusts of a frozen loaf to the dogs, made up her pack, bound on her webs, and set off on Jim's laborious trail. As she reached the edge of the barren she saw the first swoop of the wind lift and drive a great cloud of snow along the desolate expanse. She hesitated for a moment, then advanced from the shelter of the woods. The level rays of the sun flamed across the white waste and dazzled her eyes. The tears froze on her cheeks and lashes, and she wiped them away with the back of a red mitten. The dogs ran ahead in Jim's deep trail. The wind swooped again, nearer this time, spun gleaming clouds in the sunshine and enveloped the girl in an icy blast and veils of stinging snow. She bowed her head and closed her eyes until the suffocating drift had passed.

The wind increased in violence. The sun continued to shine in a clear sky, but it and the landscape were frequently completely veiled from the girl by the flying drift. Sometimes the wind and the hunted snow swirled past her on the right or left, and sometimes it swirled over her, closing her eyes and snatching away her breath. She held bravely to her course. The dogs returned to her, leaping and yelping anxiously. Long mounds of white formed before her heavy snowshoes, puffed up and vanished and formed again. But she staggered ahead, stooped almost double. She wondered anxiously if Jim had reached shelter. Suddenly, after a deluge of wind and snow more violent and prolonged than usual, she saw that the deep tracks had vanished, wiped out in some places and completely filled in others. She halted unsteadily for a moment and selected landmarks to travel by before the drift sprang up again, then staggered forward.

Consciousness soon returned to Jim Todhunter in the den in the heart of the thicket of spruces. He found that snow had sifted in upon him, through the tangled and overlapping boughs, to a depth of several inches. He stood up, taking all his weight on the uninjured leg, and shook the blankets. He felt much better--almost himself again. He looked abroad, over the edge of the pit and through the heavy screen of branches, and saw the drifting clouds lift and spin and fall. He thought, against his will, of Flora Ducat. He wondered if she had yet waked and discovered his absence. He hoped not. He hoped that no evil chance had aroused her in time for her to have left the shelter of the western forest before sunrise and the outbreak of wind. To change the trend of his thoughts, he untied and unwound the blanket from his left leg, examined the bandages, and found them all in order and free of blood, and replaced the blanket. He smoked a cigarette very comfortably, listening to the wind and driving drift go past and over and watching the sift of snow as fine as spray through the black brush above him.

The wind increased in force and Jim became restless. Thoughts of Flora Ducat grew insistent. At last he got to his feet again and set to gathering dry twigs and branches that were within his reach but which did not impair his shelter. This done, he crawled out of the hole and worked farther afield, using a heavy knife. The thicket was ten or a dozen paces in diameter, close-growing and thick with dead wood. He returned to his den, heaped the fuel conveniently around the mouth of it, settled down again and made a tiny fire on the frozen ground beside him. He was warm enough without the fire, but the lively flame cheered him. He fed it with dry twigs and fern, and soon with little sticks as thick as his thumb; and so it grew from the size of his fist to the size of his head; and still it grew, and he was forced to enlarge the pit. He ate a little bread and cold pork and smoked another cigarette. A thin spray of snow continued to sift through the roof of brush and fall hissing into the fire. He grew drowsy and nodded. He was aroused by the yelping of a dog, then by a snowslide, an increased hissing of the fire, and the dog itself leaping upon him. He quieted the dog, rolled his blankets and placed them at a safe distance from the fire, snugged himself for the trail, slung his rifle, threw dry brush and green on the fire, and crawled out of the den. The dog leaped over him and plunged ahead. He crawled from the edge of the thicket into a world of smothering, flying white.

Jim followed the dog. He resembled a swimmer using the overhead racing stroke in a sea of foam and froth. The drift and wind were almost continuous by this time, but in every lull he cleared his eyes and looked behind and saw the smoke of his fire. The dog returned to him often, encouraging him with yelps and jumps. In places the drift was so deep that he was forced to stand and hop on his right leg, plunge, stagger up, and hop again. The second dog appeared for a moment, leaped upon him, slashed his face with a wet tongue, and vanished into the flying snow.

Flora Ducat had ceased to struggle by the time Jim found her. Only her red hood and a red stocking showed above the drift. He knelt to windward of her and shook her with both hands. Then he cleared the big webs from her feet and hoisted her to her knees. She opened her eyes and looked at him with a bewildered expression.

"Are you hurt?" he asked.

She shook her head.

"Frozen?" he asked.

"Only tired--tired to death," she said.

The blinding drift sprang up and drove over them. He shielded her from it. He removed her pack from her shoulders and swung it to his own back and added her snowshoes to the load.

"And I have cramps," she moaned. "Snowshoers' cramps--in both legs--terribly."

"Then you must crawl," he said. "Follow me."