After Dave had gone, setting out at daybreak on his moose-hide
snowshoes, which crunched musically on the hard snow, things went very
well for a while at the lonely clearing. It was not so lonely, either,
during the bright hours about midday, when the sunshine managed to
accumulate something almost like warmth in the sheltered yard. About
noon the two red and white cows and the yoke of wide-horned red oxen
would stand basking in front of the lean-to, near the well,
contentedly chewing their cuds. At this time the hens, too, yellow
and black and speckled, would come out and scratch in the litter,
perennially undiscouraged by the fact that the only thing they found
beneath it was the snow. The vivid crossbills, red and black and
white, would come to the yard in flocks, and the quaker-coloured
snow-buntings, and the big, trustful, childlike, pine grosbeaks, with
the growing stain of rose-purple over their heads and necks. These
kept Lidey interested, helping to pass the days that now, to her
excited anticipations, seemed so long. Perhaps half a dozen times a
day she would print a difficult communication to Santa Claus with some
new idea, some new suggestion. These missives were mailed to the good
Saint of Children by the swift medium of the roaring kitchen fire; and
as the draught whisked their scorching fragments upwards, Lidey was
satisfied that they went straight to their destination. The child's
joy in her anticipations was now the more complete because, since her
father's departure, her mother had ceased to discourage her hopes.
On the day before Christmas Eve, however, the mother felt symptoms of
a return of her old sickness. Immediately she grew anxious, realizing
how necessary it was that she should keep well. This nervous
apprehension hastened the result that she most dreaded. Her pain and
her weakness grew worse hour by hour. Mastered by her memories of
what she had been through before, she was in no mood to throw off the
attack. That evening, crawling to the barn with difficulty, she amazed
the horse and the cattle by coaxing them to drink again, then piled
their mangers with a two-days' store of hay, and scattered buckwheat
recklessly for the hens. The next morning she could barely drag
herself out of bed to light the fire; and Lidey had to make her
breakfast--which she did contentedly enough--on bread and butter and
unlimited molasses.
It was a weary day for the little one, in spite of her responsibilities.
Muffled up and mittened, she was able, under her mother's directions, to
carry a little water to the stock in a small tin kettle, making many
journeys. And she was able to keep the fire going. But the hours crept
slowly, and she was so consumed with impatience that all her usual
amusements lost their savour. Not even the rare delight of being
allowed to cut pictures out of some old illustrated papers could
divert her mind from its dazzling anticipations. But before Christmas
could come, must come her father; and from noon onward she would keep
running to the door every few minutes to peer expectantly down the
trail. She was certain that, at the worst, he could not by any
possibility be delayed beyond supper-time, for he was needed to get
supper--or, rather, as Lidey expressed it, to help her get supper for
mother! Lidey was not hungry, to be sure, but she was getting
mortally tired of unmitigated bread and butter and molasses.
Supper-time, however, came and went, and no sign of Dave's return. On
the verge of tears, Lidey munched a little of the now distasteful
food. Her mother, worn out with the pain, which had at last relaxed
its grip, fell into a heavy sleep. There was no light in the cabin
except the red glow from the open draught of the stove, and the
intense, blue-white moonlight streaming in through the front window.
The child's impatience became intolerable.
Flinging open the door for the hundredth time, she gazed out eagerly
across the moonlit snow and down the trail. The cloudless moon,
floating directly above it, transfigured that narrow and lonely road
into a path to wonderland. In the mystic radiance--blue-white, but
shot with faint, half-imagined flashes of emerald and violet--Lidey
could see no loneliness whatever. The monstrous solitude became to her
eyes a garden of silver and crystal. As she gazed, it lured her
irresistibly.
With a sudden resolve she noiselessly closed the door, lit the lamp,
and began to put on her wraps, stealing about on tiptoe that she might
not awaken her mother. She was quite positive that, by this time, her
father must be almost home. As her little brain dwelt upon this idea,
she presently brought herself to see him, striding swiftly along in
the moonlight just beyond the turn of the trail. If she hurried, she
could meet him before he came out upon the clearing. The thought
possessed her. Stealing a cautious glance at her mother's face to be
sure her sleep was sound, she slipped out into the shine. A moment
more and her tiny figure, hooded and muffled and mittened, was dancing
on moccasined feet across the snow.
At the entrance to the trail, Lidey felt the first qualm of misgiving.
The path of light, to be sure, with all its fairy-book enticement, lay
straight before her. But the solemn woods, on either side of the path,
were filled with great shadows and a terrible stillness. At this point
Lidey had half a mind to turn back. But she was already a young person
of positive ideas, not lightly to be swerved from a purpose; and her
too vivid imagination still persisted in showing her that picture of
her father, speeding towards her just beyond the turn of the trail.
She even thought that she could hear his steps upon the daunting
stillness. With her heart quivering, yet uplifted by an exaltation of
hope, she ran on, not daring to glance again into the woods. To
sustain her courage she kept thinking of the look of gay astonishment
that would flash into her father's face as he met her running towards
him--just around the turn of the trail!
The turn was nearly a quarter of a mile distant, but the child reached
it at last. With a little cry of confident relief she rushed forward.
The long trail--now half in shadow from the slight change in its
direction--stretched out empty before her. In the excess of her
disappointment she burst into tears and sat down on the snow
irresolutely.
Her first impulse--after she had cried for a minute, and wiped her
eyes with the little mittens, which promptly stiffened in the stinging
frost--was to face about and run for home as fast as she could. But
when she turned and glanced behind her, the backward path appeared
quite different. When she no longer faced the moonlight, the world
took on an unfriendly, sinister look. There were unknown terrors all
along that implacable blue-white way through the dread blackness of
the woods. Sobbing with desolation, she turned again towards the moon.
Ahead, for all her fears, the trail still held something of the
glamour and the dazzle. Ahead, too, as she reminded herself, was
surely her father, hastening to meet her, only not quite so near as
she had imagined. Summoning back her courage, and comforting her
lonely spirit with thoughts of what Santa Claus was going to bring
her, she picked herself up and continued her journey at a hurried
little walk.
She had not gone more than a few steps, when a strange, high sound,
from somewhere far behind her, sent her heart into her throat and
quickened her pace to a run.
Again came that high, long-drawn, quavering sound; and the child's
heart almost stopped beating. If only she could see her father coming!
She had never heard any sound just like that; it was not savage, nor
very loud, but somehow it seemed to carry a kind of horror on its
floating cadence. It reminded her, very faintly, of the howling of
some dogs that she had heard in the Settlement. She was not afraid of
dogs. But she knew there were no dogs in the forest.
Just as she was beginning to lose her breath and slacken her pace,
that terrible cry came wavering again through the trees, much louder
now and nearer. It lent new strength to her tired little feet, and she
fled on faster than ever, her red lips open and her eyes wide. Another
slight turn of the trail, and it ran once more directly towards the
moon, stretching on and on till it narrowed from sight. And nowhere in
the shining track was Dave to be seen. Lidey had now, however, but one
thought in her quivering brain, and that was to keep running and get
to her father before those dreadful voices could overtake her. She
knew they were coming up swiftly. They sounded terribly near. When she
had gone about two hundred yards beyond the last bend of the trail,
she noticed, a few steps ahead of her, a tiny clearing, and at its
farther edge the gable of a little hut rising a couple of feet above
the snow. She knew the place. She had played in it that summer, while
Dave was cutting the coarse hay on the clearing. It was a place that
had been occupied by lonely trappers and lumber prospectors. Being a
work of men's hands, it gave the child a momentary sense of comfort,
of companionship in the dreadful wild. She paused, uncertain whether
to continue along the trail or to seek the shelter of the empty hut.
When the crunching of her own little footsteps stopped, however, she
was instantly aware of the padding of other feet behind her. Looking
back, she saw a pack of grey beasts just coming around the turn. They
were something like dogs. But Lidey knew they were not dogs. She had
seen pictures of them--awful pictures. She had read stories of them
which had frozen her blood as she read. Now, her very bones seemed to
melt within her. They were wolves! For a moment her throat could form
no sound. Then--"Father!" she screamed despairingly, and rushed for
the hut.
As she reached it, the wolves were hardly a dozen paces behind. The
door stood half open, but drifted full of snow to within little more
than a foot of the top. Into the low opening the child dived head
first, like a rabbit, crept behind the door, and fell upon the snow,
gasping, too horror-stricken to make any outcry.
A step from the hut door the wolves halted abruptly. The half-buried
hut, and the dark hole leading into it--these were things they did not
understand, except that they recognized them as belonging to man.
Anything belonging to man was dangerous. In that dark hole they
suspected a trap. The leader went up to it, and almost poked his nose
into it, sniffing. But he backed away sharply as if he had met with a
blow on the snout, and his nostrils wrinkled in savage enmity. The man
smell was strong in the hut. It seemed very like a trap.
Lying flat on her stomach behind the door, Lidey stared out through
the narrow crack with eyes that seemed starting from her head. Out
there in the clear glitter of the moonlight she saw the wolves go
prowling savagely to and fro, and heard their steps as they cautiously
circled the hut, seeking another entrance. They kept about five or six
feet distant from it at first, so suspicious were they of that man
smell that had greeted the leader's first attempt at investigation.
When they had prowled about the hut for several minutes, they all sat
down on their haunches before the door and seemed to deliberate. The
child felt their dreadful eyes piercing her through and through, as
they searched her out through the crack and penetrated her vain
hiding.
Suddenly, while the eyes of all the pack were flaming upon her, she
saw the leader come swiftly forward and thrust his fierce snout
right against the crack of the door. In a sort of madness she
struck at it with her little, mittened hand. The wolf, apparently
still disconcerted by the man smell that greeted his nostrils, sprang
back warily. Then the whole pack drew a foot or two closer to the
open doorway. Ravenous though they were, they were not yet assured
that the hut was not a trap. They were not yet quite ready to
crawl in and secure their prey. But gradually they were edging
nearer. A few moments more and the leader, no less crafty than savage,
would creep in. Already he had accustomed himself to the menace of
that scent. Now, he did creep in, as far as the middle of his body,
investigating. His red jaws and long, white teeth appeared around the
edge of the door. At the sight Lidey's voice returned to her.
Shrinking back against the farthest wall, she gave shriek after
shriek that seemed to tear the dreadful stillness. In the madness of
her terror she hardly noticed that the wolf's head was suddenly
withdrawn.