Ottumwa tri-weekly courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1903-1916, 1915-10-21
lmeat and as much hot tea as sh'
co1,ld drink

meat and as much hot tea as she
could drink.
The terrible hour she dreaded fol-
lowed that. She wrapped blankets
closely about her fathers 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 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
Pierre Radisson lay on his balsam
bed, with nothing over him now but
the gray sky and the spruce-tops:
Kazan stood stifflegged and shifted
the air. His spine bristled when
Joan went back slowly and kneeled
beside the blanked-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 foFH 'fthe river,
! floundering knee-deep in the freshly
fallen and drifted snow. Halfway Joan
stumbled in a. drift and fell, her loose
hair flying in a shimmering veil over
the snow. With 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, Wolff
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 wind
was rising. It came from the north
and east, straight In her face, ana
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 sobbing
choking cry. Forty miles! She
clutched 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 pain in her chest
NJ
her face, and suddenly she remem
bered the thermometer. She exposed
it for time on the top OF the tent
When she looked at it few minutes
later it was thirty degrees belo"
zero. Forty miles! And her father
had told her that she could make II
= 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 tenn
perature at thirty below, and moan
ing wind bringing the first warning
of blizzard. .@
The timber was far behind hel
! now. Ahead there was nothing but
the pitiless barren, and the timber
beyond that was hidden by the gray
gloom of the day. II there had beer
| trees, Joan's heart would not have
/ choked so with terror. But there was
nothing nothing but that gra,
/ ghostly gloom, with the rim of the
sky touching the earth mile away.
The snow grew heavy under hel
feet. Always she was watching fol
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, ant
that there was a growing pain back
of her eyes. 1t was the intense cold
The river widened into a small