The girl's voice stirred the benumbed youth into action again, and he
followed her mechanically. His slender stock of physical strength was
almost gone, but his will remained unbroken. At every rough place she
came back to him to support him, to hearten him, and so he crept on
through the darkness, falling often, stumbling against the trees,
slipping and sliding, till at last his guide, pitching down a sharp
slope, came directly upon a wire fence.
"Glory be!" she called. "Here is a fence, and the cabin should be near,
although I see no light. Hello! Tony!"
No voice replied, and, keeping Wayland's hand, she felt her way along the
fence till it revealed a gate; then she turned toward the roaring of the
stream, which grew louder as they advanced. "The cabin is near the falls,
that much I know," she assured him. Then a moment later she joyfully
cried out: "Here it is!"
Out of the darkness a blacker, sharper shadow rose. Again she called, but
no one answered. "The ranger is away," she exclaimed, in a voice of
indignant alarm. "I do hope he left the door unlocked."
Too numb with fatigue, and too dazed by the darkness to offer any aid,
Wayland waited--swaying unsteadily on his feet--while she tried the door.
It was bolted, and with but a moment's hesitation, she said: "It looks
like a case of breaking and entering. I'll try a window." The windows,
too, were securely fastened. After trying them all, she came back to
where Wayland stood. "Tony didn't intend to have anybody pushing in," she
decided. "But if the windows will not raise they will smash."
A crash of glass followed, and with a feeling that it was all part of a
dream, Wayland waited while the girl made way through the broken sash
into the dark interior. Her next utterance was a cry of joy: "Oh, but
it's nice and warm in here! I can't open the door. You'll have to come in
the same way I did."
He was too weak and too irresolute to respond immediately, and, reaching
out, she took him by the arms and dragged him across the sill. Her
strength seemed prodigious. A delicious warmth, a grateful dryness, a
sense of shelter enfolded him like a garment. The place smelled
deliciously of food, of fire, of tobacco.
Leading him toward the middle of the room, Berrie said: "Stand here till
I strike a light."
As her match flamed up Norcross found himself in a rough-walled cabin, in
which stood a square cook-stove, a rude table littered with dishes, and
three stools made of slabs. It was all very rude; but it had all the
value of a palace at the moment.
The girl's quick eye saw much else. She located an oil-lamp, some
pine-wood, and a corner cupboard. In a few moments the lamp was lit, the
stove refilled with fuel, and she was stripping Wayland's wet coat from
his back, cheerily discoursing as she did so. "Here's one of Tony's old
jackets, put that on while I see if I can't find some dry stockings for
you. Sit right down here by the stove; put your feet in the oven. I'll
have a fire in a jiffy. There, that's right. Now I'll start the
coffee-pot." She soon found the coffee, but it was unground. "Wonder,
where he keeps his coffee-mill." She rummaged about for a few minutes,
then gave up the search. "Well, no matter, here's the coffee, and here's
a hammer. One of the laws of the trail is this: If you can't do a thing
one way, do it another."
She poured the coffee beans into an empty tomato-can and began to pound
them with the end of the hammer handle, laughing at Wayland's look of
wonder and admiration. "Necessity sure is the mother of invention out
here. How do you feel by now? Isn't it nice to own a roof and four walls?
I'm going to close up that window as soon as I get the coffee started.
Are you warming up?"
"Oh yes, I'm all right now," he replied; but he didn't look it, and her
own cheer was rather forced. He was in the grasp of a nervous chill, and
she was deeply apprehensive of what the result of his exposure might be.
It seemed as if the coffee would never come to a boil.
"I depend on that to brace you up," she said.
After hanging a blanket over the broken window, she set out some cold
meat and a half dozen baking-powder biscuits, which she found in the
cupboard, and as soon as the coffee was ready she poured it for him; but
she would not let him leave the fire. She brought his supper to him and
sat beside him while he ate and drank.
"You must go right to bed," she urged, as she studied his weary eyes.
"You ought to sleep for twenty-four hours."
The hot, strong coffee revived him physically and brought back a little
of his courage, and he said: "I'm ashamed to be such a weakling."
"Now hush," she commanded. "It's not your fault that you are weak. Now,
while I am eating my supper you slip off your wet clothes and creep into
Tony's bunk, and I'll fill one of these syrup-cans with hot water to put
at your feet."
It was of no use for him to protest against her further care. She
insisted, and while she ate he meekly carried out her instructions, and
from the delicious warmth and security of his bed watched her moving
about the stove till the shadows of the room became one with the dusky
figures of his sleep.
A moment later something falling on the floor woke him with a start, and,
looking up, he found the sun shining, and Berrie confronting him with
anxious face. "Did I waken you?" she asked. "I'm awfully sorry. I'm
trying to be extra quiet. I dropped a pan. How do you feel this
_morning_?"