"Come across to the fire," urged Ruth. "We girls are lost from Snow
Camp. But we're all right so far. My! how the snow blows."
Facing the storm they could hardly make headway at all. Indeed, the youth fell within a few yards and Ruth was obliged to drag him through the drifts.
Her friends continued to shout, and occasionally she stood upright, made a megaphone of her hands, and returned their hail. But her strength—all of it—finally had to be given to the boy. She seized him by the shoulders and fairly dragged him toward the other side of the gully, thus walking against the wind, backwards. Occasionally she threw a glance over her shoulder to make sure that she was making straight for the campfire.
The girls' voices drew nearer and finally, at the foot of the slope leading up to the camp, she was forced to halt and drop her burden.
"Come down and help me, Madge!" she cried. "It's a boy—a boy! He can't help himself. Come quick!"
The girls were only a few yards away, but so fiercely did the wind blow that Ruth had to repeat her call for help before Madge Steele understood. Then the big girl dropped down off the ledge and plowed her way toward Ruth and her burden.
"The poor fellow! who is he?" gasped Madge, as together they raised the strange boy and started up the sharp ascent.
"Not Tom! Oh! it's never Tom?" shrieked Helen at the top of the hill.
"No, no!" gasped Ruth. "It's—the—boy—that—ran away."
They got him upon the dry ledge of rock before the fire. His cheeks showed frostbitten spots, and Jennie began to rub them with snow. "That's the way to treat frostbite," she declared. "Take off his boots. If his feet are frosted we'll have to treat them the same way."