"I'll make you comfortable first," she returned.
He made an enormous effort, and then, with her quick help and with his
back to her knee, had raised himself on his elbows.
"And afterward?" he asked.
"Build a fire."
"Wood?"
"Down there."
"Two bits of wood tied on my leg--splints. Then I can drag myself. See?
Like a blessed old walrus."
He smiled and she kissed his bandaged face again.
"Else it hurts," he apologized, "more than I can stand."
She stood up again, put his rifle and knife to his hand, for fear of
that lurking wolf, abandoning her own rifle with an effort, and went
striding and leaping from rock to rock toward the trees below. She made
the chips fly, and was presently towing three venerable pine dwarfs,
bumping over rock and crevice, back to Trafford. She flung them down,
stood for a moment bright and breathless, then set herself to hack off
the splints he needed from the biggest stem. "Now," she said, coming to
him.
"A fool," he remarked, "would have made the splints down there.
You're--_good_, Marjorie."
She lugged his leg out straight, put it into the natural and least
painful pose, padded it with moss and her torn handkerchief, and bound
it up. As she did so a handful of snowflakes came whirling about them.
She was now braced up to every possibility. "It never rains," she said
grimly, "but it pours," and went on with her bone-setting. He was badly
weakened by pain and shock, and once he spoke to her sharply. "Sorry,"
he said a moment later.
She rolled him over on his chest, and left him to struggle to the
shelter of the rock while she went for more wood.
The sky alarmed her. The mountains up the valley were already hidden by
driven rags of slaty snowstorms. This time she found a longer but easier
path for dragging her boughs and trees; she determined she would not
start the fire until nightfall, nor waste any time in preparing food
until then. There were dead boughs for kindling--more than enough. It
was snowing quite fast by the time she got up to him with her second
load, and a premature twilight already obscured and exaggerated the
rocks and mounds about her. She gave some of her cheese to Trafford, and
gnawed some herself on her way down to the wood again. She regretted
that she had brought neither candles nor lantern, because then she might
have kept on until the cold night stopped her, and she reproached
herself bitterly because she had brought no tea. She could forgive
herself the lantern, for she had never expected to be out after dark,
but the tea was inexcusable. She muttered self-reproaches while she
worked like two men among the trees, panting puffs of mist that froze
upon her lips and iced the knitted wool that covered her chin. "Why
don't they teach a girl to handle an ax?" she cried.