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."