He was face to face with the flaming truth, and he knew his fate. The North, defied so long, had conquered him a last. It had been waiting for him, lurking, watching its chance; and with its cruel agents, the bitter cold and the unending snow, it had crushed and beaten him down. He felt no resentment. He was glad that the trial was over. He knew a deep, infinite peace.
Sleep was encroaching upon him now. He felt himself drifting, and the tide would never bring him back. He stirred a little, putting his hands in his armpits, his face resting on his elbow. The wind swept by, sobbing: there in the shadow of death he caught its tones and its messages as never before. He was being swept into space. ...
On the trail that he had made on the out-journey, and which he had tried to vainly to follow back, Virginia came mushing toward him. Never before had her muscles responded so obediently to her will; she sped at a pace that she had never traveled before. It was as if some power above herself was bearing her along, swiftly, easily, with never a wasted motion. She tilted the nose of her snowshoes just the right angle, no more or less, and all her muscles seemed to work in perfect unison.
The bitter cold of the early morning hours only made her blood flow faster and gave her added energy. She scarcely felt the pack on her back. The snowshoe trail, however, was so faint as to be almost invisible.
Because the snow had been firm in this part of Bill's journey, his track was not so deep and the drifting snow had almost completely filled it. In a few places the track was entirely obscured; always there were merely dim indentations. If she had started an hour later she could not have followed the trail at all. For all the day was clear, the wind still whirled flurries of dry snow across her path.
But she didn't permit herself to despair. If need be, she told herself, she would follow him clear to the Twenty-three Mile cabin. The tracks were ever more dim, but surely they would be deeper again where Bill had encountered the soft snow.
It became increasingly probable, however, that the tracks would completely fade away before that time. Soon the difficulty of finding the imprints in the snow began to slacken her gait. To lose them completely meant failure: she could not find her way in these snowy stretches unguided. As morning reached its full, the white wastes seemed to stretch unbroken.
Was the wind-blown snow going to defeat her purpose, after all? A great weight of fear and disappointment began to assail her. The truth of the matter was she had come to an exposed slope, and the trail had faded out under the snow dust.
At first there seemed nothing to do but turn back. It might be possible, however, to cross the ridge in front: the valley beyond was more sheltered by the wind and she might pick up the trail again. At least she could follow her own tracks back, if she failed. She sped swiftly on.
She had guessed right. Standing on the ridge top she could see, far off through one of the treeless glades that are found so often in the spruce forest, the long path of a snowshoe trail. Instinctively she followed it with her eyes.