Down and down they went, Nell hanging back her whole weight to prevent the sled slipping on to Robin's heels. David kept to the outside for the time, giving a hand to steady the load at the worst places. There was nothing top heavy or slack about the packing of the sled. They had been trained to do it to perfection--canvas cover lashed down at the sides as neatly as the mainsail cover of a well-kept yacht.
In ten minutes they had reached the stream and stood firm upon the snow-covered ice. The real journey was beginning.
They stood still to take breath after the scramble of that quick descent. Nell looked back at the track. It was covered already with snow. She felt a thrill of thankfulness that her hope was fulfilled. The marks of the sled runners were not quite gone in places--though they would be soon--but the trail of the dog's feet, and the digs made by the heel of the snowshoes when the weight was thrown back so hard, were already gone. The hard packing of the snow had helped them, and now came fresh snow and blotted out the trail.
On either side of them the banks rose fairly steep, and woods covered the banks. All the world was still and grey, and under the spruce firs the snow carpet lay smooth and untrodden-- dead white with the black boles rising from it.
Their road lay straight ahead by the frozen stream, and the one thing that mattered was haste.
David now took his place as leader. Robin trotted behind him in the traces, muzzle to the ground as he always ran, and Nell pushed at the back. Both she and David wore the round-toed snowshoes that most of the Indians use--not the very long shape like a boat, worn by the plainsmen, and the men who go on the long trail over the vast snow expanses in the far north.
These shoes are made of the green wood of the tamarack, steamed to make it pliable--then the loop can be bowed into the shape of the snowshoe racket. This is bound in place by strips of caribou skin rawhide soaked in warm water, which also binds the ends together. When this is done the shoe is hung up to dry slowly, afterwards holes are made with the red-hot cleaning rod of a rifle which is used for boring, then webbing of caribou rawhide shrinks when it is wet and thus tightens up the shoe when other things would stretch.
Both Nell and David were used to this form of travelling and had long ceased to get the cramps and aches that come to people at the beginning.
Silent as the falling snow down the river path between the deathly stillness of the woods they flew along.
The journey had begun in earnest.