David walked round the fire cautiously and found the rabbit. There it was, left on the battered battlefield. He picked it up gingerly.
"If we knew where the catamount was, we might go to him and say, 'Here is your rabbit.' As we don't, Robin had better have it. He won't mind. He didn't get much supper. We've got to make our food last."
Robin did not seem to mind much, and so the other two let him finish the poor cat's find, while they divided a bit of Nell's bread between them. It was cold. They were both rather weary all over, but they laughed and neither one nor the other confessed to that weariness, for this was only the beginning of the trail.
Nell decreed just one more hour in their bags, and then they must break camp and get off with dawn. She got no more sleep herself, that interlude had been too strenuous. She lay warm in her fur bag thinking--thinking, as the dark turned into grey. Then she got out of her bag and started on the morning work, perhaps the most miserable and difficult time in the twenty-four hours of a day's trail. The stiffness had not gone out of her tired muscles, her hands seemed stupid with the bitter morning chill. But Nell said never a word. She was leader, and it was her job to keep the flag flying, whatever she felt herself.
Soon the fire was blazing and the billy-can hung over it to boil water. Then she got out her treat, the special secret she had planned for the two first mornings. In the bag with the foodstuffs and utensils she had hidden a tight-lidded can of ready-made oatmeal porridge. There was always a sack of the coarse kind at the log house, and so Nell had boiled enough--or rather taken what was boiling--it was always ready at home. Only enough for two mornings, but even that would be a help. "One wants breaking in by degrees," thought poor Nell as her blue hands stirred the porridge.
David woke and saw it; what he said about that surprise made things very cheerful. Later on there grew a faint pinkness, low between the trees. The snow had ceased to fall, and far away the sun was rising on the white world. Nell did not say so, because her principle always was never to look for trouble, or to express dread of a possible one, but it was a pity the snow had ceased to fall. Moreover, either the shelter of the wood made the air less bitter or it really was warmer. And she did not want a thaw--not yet. There was that long, long river road ahead, and though the ice would remain thick, a thaw would start the little streamlets in the hills, thousands of small springs would trickle down into the river bed, and that would set the water swelling and lifting under the ice.
There was the more need for hurry. That was the way she looked at it. So breakfast was eaten, the sled neatly packed, and the party on the trail again before true daylight.
The first thing they came across as they turned into the river road was the dead body of the catamount. Nell was sorry about it. The great brindled beast was so torn and disfigured.
"After all, it was his rabbit," she said again. "I hate lynxes."
"The lynx got an ugly one in the eye all the same," suggested David. "It's not feeling very lively this morning."