It was near the end of December when Pete thought his charges had become sufficiently hardened to undertake the long journey. The weather, if it had not moderated (it would not begin to moderate there until long after spring had brought out the flowers in the distant Park), had settled a little after its first fury. The storms came with less frequency, and the snow had assumed a certain stability with the steadily added weight. Both Marion and Haig bad mastered their snowshoes, and were able to travel slowly after Pete. Moreover, all the delicacies that Pete had brought had been consumed, despite their most careful husbanding, and even the meager supply of salt and pepper would soon be exhausted, leaving only the unseasoned venison of odious memory.
The night before the day set for their departure, Pete broiled strips of venison sufficient for a week or more, and stowed them in his knapsack. At dawn they were up, and eagerly making the final preparations. Haig and Marion, in their impatience, would have eaten nothing, but the Indian, true to his tribal habit of filling the stomach before a march, insisted that breakfast should be a methodical and leisurely business. From some recess he drew the last soup tablet, the last onion, and the last of the ground coffee, which he had clandestinely saved against this great event. The feast with which they had celebrated Marion’s recovery was 327 now repeated in celebration of their farewell to the cave,––the soup, the rabbit stew and the black coffee.
Then, when Pete had fastened their snowshoes securely on their moccasined feet, and had gone out to trample down the fresh snow on the platform before the cave, Haig and Marion stood together for a last look upon the scene of their sufferings. They looked at the dying fire, at the flattened beds of boughs, at the long row of notches on the wall, at the crutches lying among the firewood, at crumpled and ragged boots and bits of worn-out clothing.
“Good-by––you!” cried Marion, laughing tremulously, very near to tears.
“Yes, good-by!” said Haig.
That cave––what had it not meant for him! There was his Valley of the Shadow, into which he had again descended to seek and find the better part of him that he had left there long ago.
“Go on out, please!” he said presently. “I’ll come in a minute.”
She looked at him curiously, but obeyed. Haig waited till she had gone, and then shuffled clumsily on his snowshoes across the floor to where, beyond the fire, lay one of Marion’s boots. It was a torn and misshapen thing, the sole worn through, the leather curled up from the open toe. He picked it up hastily, and with a swift glance at the mouth of the cavern, thrust it into an inside pocket of his leather coat.
It was a wonderful, thrilling, terrifying journey, filled with hardships and perils. Caution and sheer toil of travel held them to slow progress. They went 328 through vast forests, among the very tops of the tall pines; they climbed wide, bare slopes where the winds had almost stripped the snow from the gaunt rocks; they descended into sheltered valleys where the deer went scurrying at their approach; they crossed deep gulches packed half-full of blown and drifted snow; they passed close to the edges of precipices where a false step would have sent them whirling down into white abysses spiked with pines. Storms overtook them, and forced them to remain many hours in such shelter as they could find. Sometimes they slept under overhanging rocks with a fire blazing at their feet, but more often the night was spent in burrows dug in the snow. Their supply of venison ran out, and a day was lost while Pete hunted and killed a deer, and cooked strips of its flesh, to be seasoned with the very last of their salt and pepper, and kept in his knapsack. But even Marion did not lose courage or once falter, though many times her heart was in her mouth and a cold sweat on her forehead as they passed some formidable and terrifying obstacle.