OUT OF THE BLIZZARD
It was dawn when the baby snuggled close to Joan's warm breast and
awakened her with its cry of hunger. She opened her eyes, brushed back
the thick hair from her face, and could see where the shadowy form of
her father was lying at the other side of the tent. He was very quiet,
and she was pleased that he was still sleeping. She knew that the day
before he had been very near to exhaustion, and so for half an hour
longer she lay quiet, cooing softly to the baby Joan. Then she arose
cautiously, tucked the baby in the warm blankets and furs, put on her
heavier garments, and went outside.
By this time it was broad day, and she breathed a sigh of relief when
she saw that the storm had passed. It was bitterly cold. It seemed to
her that she had never known it to be so cold in all her life. The fire
was completely out. Kazan was huddled in a round ball, his nose tucked
under his body. He raised his head, shivering, as Joan came out. With
her heavily moccasined foot Joan scattered the ashes and charred sticks
where the fire had been. There was not a spark left. In returning to the
tent she stopped for a moment beside Kazan, and patted his shaggy head.
"Poor Wolf!" she said. "I wish I had given you one of the bearskins!"
She threw back the tent-flap and entered. For the first time she saw her
father's face in the light--and outside, Kazan heard the terrible
moaning cry that broke from her lips. No one could have looked at Pierre
Radisson's face once--and not have understood.
After that one agonizing cry, Joan flung herself upon her father's
breast, sobbing so softly that even Kazan's sharp ears heard no sound.
She remained there in her grief until every vital energy of womanhood
and motherhood in her girlish body was roused to action by the wailing
cry of baby Joan. Then she sprang to her feet and ran out through the
tent opening. Kazan tugged at the end of his chain to meet her, but she
saw nothing of him now. The terror of the wilderness is greater than
that of death, and in an instant it had fallen upon Joan. It was not
because of fear for herself. It was the baby. The wailing cries from the
tent pierced her like knife-thrusts.
And then, all at once, there came to her what old Pierre had said the
night before--his words about the river, the air-holes, the home forty
miles away. "_You couldn't lose yourself, Joan_" He had guessed what
might happen.
She bundled the baby deep in the furs and returned to the fire-bed. Her
one thought now was that they must have fire. She made a little pile of
birch-bark, covered it with half-burned bits of wood, and went into the
tent for the matches. Pierre Radisson carried them in a water-proof box
in a pocket of his bearskin coat. She sobbed as she kneeled beside him
again, and obtained the box. As the fire flared up she added other bits
of wood, and then some of the larger pieces that Pierre had dragged into
camp. The fire gave her courage. Forty miles--and the river led to their
home! She must make that, with the baby and Wolf. For the first time
she turned to him, and spoke his name as she put her hand on his head.
After that she gave him a chunk of meat which she thawed out over the
fire, and melted the snow for tea. She was not hungry, but she recalled
how her father had made her eat four or five times a day, so she forced
herself to make a breakfast of a biscuit, a shred of meat and as much
hot tea as she could drink.
The terrible hour she dreaded followed that. She wrapped blankets
closely about her father's body, and tied them with babiche cord. After
that she piled all the furs and blankets that remained on the sledge
close to the fire, and snuggled baby Joan deep down in them. Pulling
down the tent was a task. The ropes were stiff and frozen, and when she
had finished, one of her hands was bleeding. She piled the tent on the
sledge, and then, half, covering her face, turned and looked back.
Pierre Radisson lay on his balsam bed, with nothing over him now but the
gray sky and the spruce-tops. Kazan stood stiff-legged and sniffed the
air. His spine bristled when Joan went back slowly and kneeled beside
the blanket-wrapped object. When she returned to him her face was white
and tense, and now there was a strange and terrible look in her eyes as
she stared out across the barren. She put him in the traces, and
fastened about her slender waist the strap that Pierre had used. Thus
they struck out for the river, floundering knee-deep in the freshly
fallen and drifted snow. Half-way Joan stumbled in a drift and fell, her
loose hair flying in a shimmering veil over the snow. With a mighty pull
Kazan was at her side, and his cold muzzle touched her face as she drew
herself to her feet. For a moment Joan took his shaggy head between her
two hands.
"Wolf!" she moaned. "Oh, Wolf!"
She went on, her breath coming pantingly now, even from her brief
exertion. The snow was not so deep on the ice of the river. But a wind
was rising. It came from the north and east, straight in her face, and
Joan bowed her head as she pulled with Kazan. Half a mile down the river
she stopped, and no longer could she repress the hopelessness that rose
to her lips in a sobbing choking cry. Forty miles! She clutched her
hands at her breast, and stood breathing like one who had been beaten,
her back to the wind. The baby was quiet. Joan went back and peered down
under the furs, and what she saw there spurred her on again almost
fiercely. Twice she stumbled to her knees in the drifts during the next
quarter of a mile.
After that there was a stretch of wind-swept ice, and Kazan pulled the
sledge alone. Joan walked at his side. There was a pain in her chest. A
thousand needles seemed pricking her face, and suddenly she remembered
the thermometer. She exposed it for a time on the top of the tent. When
she looked at it a few minutes later it was thirty degrees below zero.
Forty miles! And her father had told her that she could make it--and
could not lose herself! But she did not know that even her father would
have been afraid to face the north that day, with the temperature at
thirty below, and a moaning wind bringing the first warning of a
blizzard.
The timber was far behind her now. Ahead there was nothing but the
pitiless barren, and the timber beyond that was hidden by the gray gloom
of the day. If there had been trees, Joan's heart would not have choked
so with terror. But there was nothing--nothing but that gray ghostly
gloom, with the rim of the sky touching the earth a mile away.
The snow grew heavy under her feet again. Always she was watching for
those treacherous, frost-coated traps in the ice her father had spoken
of. But she found now that all the ice and snow looked alike to her, and
that there was a growing pain back of her eyes. It was the intense cold.
The river widened into a small lake, and here the wind struck her in the
face with such force that her weight was taken from the strap, and Kazan
dragged the sledge alone. A few inches of snow impeded her as much as a
foot had done before. Little by little she dropped back. Kazan forged to
her side, every ounce of his magnificent strength in the traces. By the
time they were on the river channel again, Joan was at the back of the
sledge, following in the trail made by Kazan. She was powerless to help
him. She felt more and more the leaden weight of her legs. There was but
one hope--and that was the forest. If they did not reach it soon, within
half an hour, she would be able to go no farther. Over and over again
she moaned a prayer for her baby as she struggled on. She fell in the
snow-drifts. Kazan and the sledge became only a dark blotch to her. And
then, all at once, she saw that they were leaving her. They were not
more than twenty feet ahead of her--but the blotch seemed to be a vast
distance away. Every bit of life and strength in her body was now bent
upon reaching the sledge--and baby Joan.
It seemed an interminable time before she gained. With the sledge only
six feet ahead of her she struggled for what seemed to her to be an hour
before she could reach out and touch it. With a moan she flung herself
forward, and fell upon it. She no longer heard the wailing of the storm.
She no longer felt discomfort. With her face in the furs under which
baby Joan was buried, there came to her with swiftness and joy a vision
of warmth and home. And then the vision faded away, and was followed by
deep night.
Kazan stopped in the trail. He came back then and sat down upon his
haunches beside her, waiting for her to move and speak. But she was
very still. He thrust his nose into her loose hair. A whine rose in his
throat, and suddenly he raised his head and sniffed in the face of the
wind. Something came to him with that wind. He muzzled Joan again, hut
she did not stir. Then he went forward, and stood in his traces, ready
for the pull, and looked hack at her. Still she did not move or speak,
and Kazan's whine gave place to a sharp excited bark.
The strange thing in the wind came to him stronger for a moment. He
began to pull. The sledge-runners had frozen to the snow, and it took
every ounce of his strength to free them. Twice during the next five
minutes he stopped and sniffed the air. The third time that he halted,
in a drift of snow, he returned to Joan's side again, and whined to
awaken her. Then he tugged again at the end of his traces, and foot by
foot he dragged the sledge through the drift. Beyond the drift there was
a stretch of clear ice, and here Kazan rested. During a lull in the wind
the scent came to him stronger than before.
At the end of the clear ice was a narrow break in the shore, where a
creek ran into the main stream. If Joan had been conscious she would
have urged him straight ahead. But Kazan turned into the break, and for
ten minutes he struggled through the snow without a rest, whining more
and more frequently, until at last the whine broke into a joyous bark.
Ahead of him, close to the creek, was a small cabin. Smoke was rising
out of the chimney. It was the scent of smoke that had come to him in
the wind. A hard level slope reached to the cabin door, and with the
last strength that was in him Kazan dragged his burden up that. Then he
settled himself back beside Joan, lifted his shaggy head to the dark sky
and howled.
A moment later the door opened. A man came out. Kazan's reddened,
snow-shot eyes followed him watchfully as he ran to the sledge. He heard
his startled exclamation as he bent over Joan. In another lull of the
wind there came from out of the mass of furs on the sledge the wailing,
half-smothered voice of baby Joan.
A deep sigh of relief heaved up from Kazan's chest. He was exhausted.
His strength was gone. His feet were torn and bleeding. But the voice
of baby Joan filled him with a strange happiness, and he lay down in his
traces, while the man carried Joan and the baby into the life and warmth
of the cabin.
A few minutes later the man reappeared. He was not old, like Pierre
Radisson. He came close to Kazan, and looked down at him.
"My God," he said. "And you did that--_alone!_"
He bent down fearlessly, unfastened him from the traces, and led him
toward the cabin door. Kazan hesitated but once--almost on the
threshold. He turned his head, swift and alert. From out of the moaning
and wailing of the storm it seemed to him that for a moment he had heard
the voice of Gray Wolf.
Then the cabin door closed behind him.
Back in a shadowy corner of the cabin he lay, while the man prepared
something over a hot stove for Joan. It was a long time before Joan rose
from the cot on which the man had placed her. After that Kazan heard her
sobbing; and then the man made her eat, and for a time they talked. Then
the stranger hung up a big blanket in front of the bunk, and sat down
close to the stove. Quietly Kazan slipped along the wall, and crept
under the bunk. For a long time he could hear the sobbing breath of the
girl. Then all was still.
The next morning he slipped out through the door when the man opened it,
and sped swiftly into the forest. Half a mile away he found the trail of
Gray Wolf, and called to her. From the frozen river came her reply, and
he went to her.
Vainly Gray Wolf tried to lure him back into their old haunts--away from
the cabin and the scent of man. Late that morning the man harnessed his
dogs, and from the fringe of the forest Kazan saw him tuck Joan and the
baby among the furs on the sledge, as old Pierre had done. All that day
he followed in the trail of the team, with Gray Wolf slinking behind
him. They traveled until dark; and then, under the stars and the moon
that had followed the storm, the man still urged on his team. It was
deep in the night when they came to another cabin, and the man beat upon
the door. A light, the opening of the door, the joyous welcome of a
man's voice, Joan's sobbing cry--Kazan heard these from the shadows in
which he was hidden, and then slipped back to Gray Wolf.
In the days and weeks that followed Joan's home-coming the lure of the
cabin and of the woman's hand held Kazan. As he had tolerated Pierre, so
now he tolerated the younger man who lived with Joan and the baby. He
knew that the man was very dear to Joan, and that the baby was very dear
to him, as it was to the girl. It was not until the third day that Joan
succeeded in coaxing him into the cabin--and that was the day on which
the man returned with the dead and frozen body of Pierre. It was Joan's
husband who first found the name on the collar he wore, and they began
calling him Kazan.
Half a mile away, at the summit of a huge mass of rock which the Indians
called the Sun Rock, he and Gray Wolf had found a home; and from here
they went down to their hunts on the plain, and often the girl's voice
reached up to them, calling, "_Kazan! Kazan! Kazan_!"
Through all the long winter Kazan hovered thus between the lure of Joan
and the cabin--and Gray Wolf.
Then came Spring--and the Great Change.