CHAPTER XXVIII

SNOW-BLIND

Kit was on his feet, grabbing for the shotgun with one hand and his mittens with the other. He was like a man demented. A dozen miles or more back to Great Owl Run, and night was at hand and he could barely see and Jerry was badly wounded and the dogs were dead. Diane would be waiting at the old cabin, at the mercy of the monster who had come back at last like an evil genius to hunt out the scene of his bloodiest crime.

Kit knew now that the stranger he had met at the police shack was Hell Bent. He knew it, not merely by surmising and guessing, but by an inward conviction, a clear and absolute prescience that left him without doubt and without hope. He knew it as positively as he had known all these weeks that he loved Diane. If anything happened to her before he could see her and pour out all the astonishing things that were in his heart, if he lost her now after she had vouchsafed him a glimpse of loveliness and incredible happiness that might have been....

He was nearly frantic with his visions of her, alone in the dismal night, needing him.

“Nothing else counts,” he told Jerry. “We’re leaving now.”

“Righto!” Jerry was perfectly willing to undertake the killing march across the barrens, but when he stooped to tighten up his snowshoes he simply doubled in the middle like a grain bag and pitched headforemost into a drift of snow.

Kit was down beside him, pulling his face out of the snow, propping the sagging back against one of the sledges, peering beseechingly. “Jerry! What is it--what’s wrong?”

The sergeant let his legs sprawl apart for added support, and managed something like a laugh. “Just went dizzy all at once. A minute ago--a big, hulking slob, and now-- I thought I was going to faint--or something. Kit--you go on!”

Kitchener unloaded the topmost sledge and hauled it into the lee of the terrace. He got his hands in his brother’s armpits and stumbled backwards, and bedded the slack, awkward body in a nest of blankets. There was no need to ask questions. Jerry’s forearm had been smashed by one of the Yellow Knives’ dum-dums. This after weeks of snow-travel that would have broken most men. The shock and the loss of blood and an accumulated fatigue fought off for days and nights: it was a miracle that he had not collapsed when he was hit. He stood up for a while on sheer nerve, and then the physical creature finally had demanded payment.

“I’ll be all right here for a few days or a week,” said Jerry, trying to make his voice sound as big as it ever had been. “I guess--I don’t believe I’d better go with you.”

Kit stripped up his brother’s sleeve and bathed the swollen, darkened flesh, and removed the tourniquet that had begun to cut too deeply. He kneaded the shattered bones into place as truely as his inexperience could accomplish the job, while Jerry looked on with a set, awry grin. Splints and bandages were speedily improvised, and the arm was bound stiff against the body, like an unused pump handle.

This much, at least, Kit could take the time to do. And then he lingered for just another moment. “It’s rotten to leave you like this, and yet, I don’t see what else to do.”

“What would I want with you?” returned Jerry scornfully. “I’ve got plenty of blankets and plenty to eat and an oil stove. And anyhow--you know--” His glance sought the reposing shape beside the second sledge. “It’s better to have somebody to sit here and keep the wolverines away. And--I don’t know--I’d like to be the one to keep the vigil. You can come back or send for us when you have a chance.”

Kit drew his hood closer about his mouth and pulled on his mittens. “Can you still see the Indians?” he asked.

“Just barely. They’re following the river and’ll be out of sight in a few minutes. If I were you I’d cut more southeast than the river runs. You’ll save several miles. The wind’s southwest. Keep it on your right cheek.”

“So-long, Jerry!” Kitchener shouldered the shotgun, and then he bent down and the brothers’ left hands met and clasped.

“We’ll be waiting for you,” said Jerry lightly.

Kit started to speak, and then decided that he’d better not attempt it. He nodded and tried to swallow the choking feeling in his throat. Then he turned his right shoulder to the vanishing sun and started off across the barrens.

“If you’re in doubt about the direction of the wind,” yelled Jerry, “rub your face with snow.” His reckless, graceless laughter was the last sound that Kit was to hear that night. “Give my love to Diane. And give Hell Bent hell.”

There were only a few more minutes left of the chilling daylight and then the early, arctic gloaming began to spread down into the awful silence and lonesomeness of the barrens.

Kit struck off at a gliding trot, his raquettes crunching pleasantly over the icy surface of the snow. He felt fit enough for enormous undertakings. The clean frosty air filled his lungs and set his blood tingling. He could keep up this sort of a dog-jog all night if he must. Not more than twelve miles to go--if he held the straight line he ought to reach Great Owl Run long before dawn.

The day vanished quickly and the night grew as dark as it ever is around the dusky circle of the north. Kit hurried on with his eyes almost shut. There was no need of seeing the ground ahead. His feet could follow the gentle undulations of the unbroken prairie.

If there were only a moon he’d have fewer misgivings. The moonshine, shifting around his head, would have given him a constant check on the compass points. But there would only be stars to-night. He could look up and feel the shimmer of the stars in his face, but he could not see well enough to pick out individuals for guidance. Only the southwest wind was trustworthy, and he kept its breath on his right cheekbone.

He counted his steps, and allowed twenty-five hundred to the mile. This ought to be approximately correct. The multiple of twenty-five hundred by twelve was thirty thousand. The total was appalling. Yet he’d already counted past the five thousand mark. He must be at least two miles on his way.

Jerry was back there, probably with his little stove alight and coffee boiling and his eternal pipe smoldering, while he gazed into the night and sat in dreamy quiet beside the man he had loved.

Every stride was taking Kit farther from Jerry and nearer to Diane. His thoughts were like restless terriers, sometimes lagging behind, but more frequently racing ahead. His longing for Diane and his fears for her existed as tangibly in his mind as actual forerunners on the trail, frantically beckoning to him, calling him on. His legs were always trying to keep up with his anxieties, and his better judgment was constantly reminding him that if he ran too fast he would spend himself too soon.

Ten-thousand foot-paces and fifteen-thousand--it seemed to him that he had been traveling thus for hours, automatically counting the feet into miles. “Ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine, fifteen thousand three hundred, one, two, three--” A deadly monotonous business this, saying numbers to himself, over and over and over again, exactly in the rhythm of his breathing and his stride. But he kept it up. If he lost track he would never know how far he had come or how far he yet must go.

As he switched the shotgun from one hand to the other it occurred to him that he did not know what loads it contained. He snapped open the breech without slacking his stride, and made sure that there were two shells chambered. They might carry buck-shot, or only a charge of “6s” for ducks and ptarmigan. He ought to have asked Jerry before he left. Well, it was too late to worry about that. Whatever the gun had in it he’d use it if he had to.

Two or three times during the next hour or so he had lost the feeling of the wind in his face. But before he was seriously alarmed the lightly fanning breeze sprang up again. He went along confidently for a while, and then all at once realized that he was moving in an apparent calm. Either there was a sudden lull, or else his skin was not as sensitive as it had been. He halted abruptly and tried Jerry’s plan of rubbing the face with snow.

It seemed to work. The right cheek felt much colder than the left. Once more he trudged onward with the assurance that he must be going the right direction.

After this he paused every now and then to gather a handful of snow and dab it over his stinging face.

Time and distance--how long he had been slogging ahead, how far he had come, he hadn’t a faintest notion. The numbers he had counted were beginning to jumble up meaninglessly in his head. He couldn’t seem to recall whether he was in his twentieth or thirtieth thousand. He began to think of himself as a minute, selfless object moving eternally in endless, invisible space....

In the middle of his long, hurrying stride he halted as abruptly as though he had hit a wall. His head turned one direction and then another, and his breathing stopped. A puff of icy wind had struck the left side of his face.

Kit flung off his hood and stood aghast in the vast silence. There was a distinct breeze quartering his path from the sinister side. Either he had unwittingly changed his direction, or else the wind had veered.

He was careful to keep his feet planted exactly as they were when the alarming change pulled him up. He mustn’t get excited. It wasn’t any use being frightened. As deliberately as he had ever moved in his life he pulled out his flash-lamp, and laid his compass in the palm of his hand, and snapped on the electric beam.

It is a peculiarity of snow-blindness that the vision is more befogged and the eyes hurt worse at night than in the full daylight. The glare of the search-lamp made him blink. It was easy enough to differentiate between light and darkness, and he even caught the glint of the metallic disc in his hand. But that was all. He couldn’t make out the compass card or the arrow. He couldn’t tell which point was north and which was south.

Kit deliberated, with a stern effort to keep his head. He had to reach the Great Owl cabin to-night. Even now he might be too late.

The breeze seemed to be much stronger than it had been. Coming off from the left. Jerry must have been certain that it would not change its point during the night. But Jerry was not infallible. It might have shifted. Or in a moment of aberration Kit perhaps had swung off his course. How was he to know?

He put away his useless torch. His head pivoted blindly in a half-circle. There was no sound nor scent to guide him, nothing that he could touch with his hand. He stood in the midst of barrenness and desolation, completely at sea. And in his heart was the tantalizing, maddening conviction that Diane was in desperate straits somewhere near, needing him frightfully--and he did not know which way to go.

The compass was clenched in his hand. In a sudden fury with himself and his sightless eyes he started to fling it away. Then, just in time, he checked his arm. It occured to him that perhaps he might read his directions by the sense of touch. He stooped to one knee, laid the compass firmly on the other knee, and tapped the crystal with the hilt of his knife. The glass shattered into fragments. The sharpest point of the needle, he recalled, was the magnetized end. He slipped his hand out of his glove, and with a gingerly forefinger he tried to trace the line of the wabbling sliver of steel.

But he was overanxious, and his hand was not as quiet as it might have been. His blundering finger dislodged the needle from its jeweled post. He heard the needle slide across the card, and it was gone before he could save it.

He went after the tiny metal arrow with his bare hands. In a widening circle he groped and searched. He dug up handfuls of snow and explored minutely among the frozen crystals. And before very long his flesh was ice and all sense of feeling had left his fingers. He wouldn’t have recognized the compass needle if he picked it up.

Now he needed his self-command. He was aware of the beginnings of that strange form of insanity that attacks lost men: the raging desire to do something, to be somewhere else, to walk off whichever way the feet are turned, to break from a walk into a run, to keep on running from the multiplying horrors that can run faster than a man.

This was the time for Kit to remember that he was one of a hardy line whose men do not lose their heads in the wilds. The old lessons of wilderness lore had been drummed into him from the days of his infancy. When in doubt, don’t move. Sit down. Cover up. He put his freezing fingers in his mouth, and did not budge.

There was nothing to be done now. He’d have to wait for the sun. He pulled his hood over his head and sank down in the snow, despairing, and shivering with cold.

And from off in the darkness, a long while afterwards, he thought he heard a sound. He was crouched in a ball with his head on his knee. His body had grown so cold that he was almost in a torpor. It may be that he had dozed now and then. He didn’t know. His faculties were nearly dormant.

But he did hear something. He raised his head. His breath had congealed under his hood. With his sleeve he wiped the frost rime from his face and eyes. Both arms were so stiff he half listened to hear them creak. What was it that had aroused him?

He remembered. There was a noise of some sort off across the tundra. He leaned forward on his hands and labored drowsily to stand up. There it was again--far off in front of him. A voice in the air--a ghostly whistle changing into faint chuckling laughter.

He was on his feet now, swaying a trifle, staring vacantly. For some reason he had picked up his shotgun. Listening until the pulse of his heart seemed to wait--

The cry! This time it was nearer--a grotesque, quavering note that reached his ears and trembled all the way down his backbone. He knew it now--the sound that had awakened him other nights in the sweat of an unearthly abhorrence--the horrid, hunting call of a great owl.

Kit stumbled forward. The creature was ahead of him. It would be time soon for it to be going home. The owls lived off there somewhere in the depths of the forest, on the other side of the creek. They circled over the barrens at night and went back at the first crack of dawn.

Whether it was night or morning, Kit didn’t know. He couldn’t even see the glimmer of the stars. His eyes had gone totally blind while he huddled in the cold. But he could hear the complaining of the owl. A low, gasping sound, with a hoarse croak at the end.

Why, it was Shedim--the bird that had caught cold in Hades! It was Diane’s owl.

Kit’s legs had refused to obey him for a minute or two. But he had staggered on somehow, and now he was beginning to feel his feet under him. His snowshoes were gripping the crusty snow. He was getting into his stride.

At moments there was utter quiet, and then he would hear the throaty wheeze in the air, at his right or at his left, or sometimes off in front of him, but always drifting farther ahead, leading him on.

He ran full tilt into a clump of bushes, and rejoiced in the frozen branches that cut his face. This was no longer the bleak tundra. He was getting somewhere at last.

The owl was still ranging ahead, and Kit charged on recklessly. There were other patches of brush in his path, and now and then a group of dwarfed trees. Usually his outgroping hands saved him.

The ground suddenly sloped down from his feet. He crashed through a tangled barrier of small growths, and then all at once he caught the clean, pungent smell of pine woods. Shedim was somewhere behind him. But he did not wait. He picked his way cautiously down the declivity, and was gladdened by the sound of running water.

Here was the creek. This must be Great Owl Run. He felt his way along the stream and found a place where the thick ice reached out from the bank. On his hands and knees he crept precariously across the slippery bridge to the opposite bank.

He no longer heard Shedim, but there was something else--not far away--rhythmic thuds of chopping, an ax blade ringing in wood. Through a border of willows and alders he thrust a path and emerged into an open space.

The chopping went on briskly, close at hand it seemed. He turned towards the sounds, started forward, and hit his knee on a stump. The axman must have seen him. The strokes stopped, and there was intense quiet. Kit had a feeling that he was being stared at.

And then something like a spurt of wind crashed past his face, a red flame leaped at him, a rifle explosion battered his ears.

He flung his shotgun to his shoulder and fired both barrels. The double shock, the dreadful hush that followed, and then a woman’s cry throbbing wildly....

“Diane!”

Kit leaped forward, and tripped, and fell. The uproar in his head faded to leaden silence.