She dropped him the great covering she had brought; then in a single, deerlike motion, she leaped the narrow crevice. On the opposite side she procured Ned’s axe; then she turned, and half running, half gliding on the ice, sped toward the nearest timber,—a number of stunted spruce two hundred yards distant at the far edge of the glacier.
Bess had need of her woodsman’s knowledge now. Never before had her blows been so true, so telling on the tough wood. Before, in the fuel cutting of months before, she had wielded the axe in fear of the lash, but to-day she worked for Ned’s life, for the one dream that mattered yet. Almost at once she had done her work and was started back with a tough pole, eight feet long and four inches in diameter, balanced on her sturdy shoulder.
Ned was still strong enough to answer her call when she returned, and the dim light still permitted him to see her lay the pole she had cut as a bridge across the crevice, cutting notches in the ice to hold it firm. Swiftly she tied one end of her rope to the pole and dropped the other to him.
“Can you climb up?” she asked him. Everything had centered down to this—whether he still had strength to climb the rope.
“Just watch me,” was the answer.
From that instant, she knew that she had won. The spirit behind his words would never falter, with victory so near. He dug his moccasins into the holes he had hacked in the ice, meanwhile working upward, hand over hand. To fall meant to die,—but Ned didn’t fall.
It was a hard fight, weakened as he was, but soon the girl’s reaching hands caught his sleeve, then his coat; finally they were fastened firmly, lifting with all the girl’s strength, under the great arms. His hand seized the pole, and he gave a great upward lunge. And then he was lying on the ice beside her, fighting for breath, not daring to believe that he was safe.
But the usual cool, half-mirthful remark that, in many little crises, Ned had learned to expect from Bess was not forthcoming to-night. Nor were the sounds in the twilight merely those of heavy breathing. The strain was over, and Bess had given way to the urge of her heart at last. Her tears flowed unchecked, whether of sorrow or happiness even she did not know.
The man crawled toward her, moved by an urge beyond him, and for a single moment his strong arms pressed her close. “Don’t cry, little pal,” he told her. He smiled, a strangely boyish, happy smile, into her eyes. Very softly, reverently he kissed her wet eyelids, then stilled her trembling lips with his own. He smiled again, a great good-humor taking hold of him. “You’re too big a girl to cry!”
It was he, to-night, who had to relieve with humor a situation that would have soon been out of bounds. Yet all at once he saw that the little sentence had meaning far beyond what he had intended. She had shown bigness to-night,—a greatness of spirit and strength that left him wondering and reverent. The battle she had fought to save his life was no less than his own waged with the white wolf, weeks before.