She dared not peep out; she dreaded that the feeble blue thread of condensed breath from her nook would betray her. She did not see, therefore, that, unable to bear away more than a tenth of the plunder, the rest was hidden under the precipice.
At last came the time when hunger drove her forth. The desolation and stillness in this hollow were overwhelming. The snow was trampled and pulled about by the searchers. Dead bodies, gashed and unlimbed, strewed the late virgin white expanse, amid the broken boxes and disrupted cases.
Ulla shuddered to tread among these hideous corpses, where it was impossible for her to recognise her late companions. To find her father was a vain idea. She took a smashed tin of meat and some chocolate, and ate ferociously.
On high, the stars glittered with a cold brightness, which revealed they saw her misery and grief, but offered no consolation. On the edge of the precipice, gorged wolves, that had devoured the voyageurs up there, were lazily contemplating the solitary form with motion in the wreck, and among the human remains of the expedition so gay and gallant fifty hours before.
Her ungovernable appetite appeased, and her thirst far from quenched by sucking a snowball, she mournfully reflected on her plight.
A child of luxury, it was more a nightmare than reality that she could be here, in the Northwestern desert, the great mass of the Rocky Mountains looming up beyond, impressive, insurmountable, and on the other three points, a thousand miles of snow! And she a young girl, alone!
A company of sappers and miners would have had a week's work in the ironbound soil under the snow to inter this mangled débris of mortality. For her to attempt the pious duty was a mockery.
Nevertheless, when the moon rose, a frenzied impulse to veil the poor creatures, with at least a little shrouding snow, would have set her in action. But at the first step towards the nearest corpse, with its trunk bristling with arrows, and its eyeless sockets appealing to the Creator against the barbarous outrage, Ulla stopped short.
She was fascinated by the spectacle presented at the junction of protruding pines where the deceptive Indian guide reposed upon the platform. The moon inundated it with tremulous beams.
Suddenly she was sure that the body was animated. So do the vampires spring to life when the moon bathes them in radiance. Certainly the figure sat up cautiously; the pale face was even visible; with a steady hand some of the trophies which adorned the monument were unhanged from the branches—the knife of Sandy Ferguson, the English rifle and cartridge container of her father, diverse appurtenances which had been left to equip the departing spirit for the happy hunting ground "over the range" yonder.