University Missourian. [volume] (Columbia, Mo.) 1908-1916, 1915-08-20

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 day, so she forced herself to
make breakfast of biscuit, a shred
of 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 blank
cts 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 we're 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. Ka-
zan stood stiff-legged and shifted the
mir Hic cnipa hrictIad mhan Ioo,
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 fasten-
ed about her slender waist the strap
that Pierre had used Thus they
struck out for the riven, fioundering
knee-deep in the freshly fallen and
drifted snow. Halfway Joan stumbled
in drift and fell, her lose hair fly
ing in shimmering veil over the
snow. With mighty pull Kazan was
at her side, and his cold muzzle touch
ed her face as she drew herself to her
feet. For a moment Joan took his
shaggy head between her two hands.
wolff she moaned. "Oh. Wolff"
She went on, her breath coming
pantingly now, even from her brief ex-
ertion. The snow was not so deep on
the ice of the river But wind was
rising. 1t 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 cr-.
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 un-
der the furs, and what she saw ther,
spurred her on again almost fierce,y.
Twice she stumbled to her knees in
the drifts during the next quarter OF
a mile.
After that there was stretch of
wind-swept ice, and Kazan pulled the
sledge alone. Joan walked at his side.
There was a pain in her chest. Al
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 1t few minutes later it
was thirty degrees below zero. For
ty 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 moaning wind bringing
the first warning of blizzard.
The timber was far behind her row.
Ahead there was nothing but the piti-
less 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 choke6
so with terror. But there was moth
lng-nothing but that gray ghostly
gloom, with the rim of the sky touch
ing 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 in her
eyes. 1t was the intense cold.
The river widened into a small lake,
and here the wind struck her in the
lace with such force that her weight
was taken from the strap, and Kazan
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