The girl’s voice stirred the benumbed youth into action again, and he followed her mechanically. His slender stock of physical strength was almost gone, but his will remained unbroken. At every rough place she came back to him to support him, to hearten him, and so he crept on through the darkness, falling often, stumbling against the trees, slipping and sliding, till at last his guide, pitching down a sharp slope, came directly upon a wire fence.
“Glory be!” she called. “Here is a fence, and the cabin should be near, although I see no light. Hello! Tony!”
No voice replied, and, keeping Wayland’s hand, she felt her way along the fence till it revealed a gate; then she turned toward the roaring of the stream, which grew louder as they advanced. “The cabin is near the falls, that much I know,” she assured him. Then a moment later she joyfully cried out: “Here it is!”
Out of the darkness a blacker, sharper shadow rose. Again she called, but no one answered. “The ranger is away,” she exclaimed, in a voice of indignant alarm. “I do hope he left the door unlocked.”
Too numb with fatigue, and too dazed by the darkness to offer any aid, Wayland waited—swaying unsteadily on his feet—while she tried the door. It was bolted, and with but a moment’s hesitation, she said: “It looks like a case of breaking and entering. I’ll try a window.” The windows, too, were securely fastened. After trying them all, she came back to where Wayland stood. “Tony didn’t intend to have anybody pushing in,” she decided. “But if the windows will not raise they will smash.”
A crash of glass followed, and with a feeling that it was all part of a dream, Wayland waited while the girl made way through the broken sash into the dark interior. Her next utterance was a cry of joy: “Oh, but it’s nice and warm in here! I can’t open the door. You’ll have to come in the same way I did.”
He was too weak and too irresolute to respond immediately, and, reaching out, she took him by the arms and dragged him across the sill. Her strength seemed prodigious. A delicious warmth, a grateful dryness, a sense of shelter enfolded him like a garment. The place smelled deliciously of food, of fire, of tobacco.
Leading him toward the middle of the room, Berrie said: “Stand here till I strike a light.”
As her match flamed up Norcross found himself in a rough-walled cabin, in which stood a square cook-stove, a rude table littered with dishes, and three stools made of slabs. It was all very rude; but it had all the value of a palace at the moment.
The girl’s quick eye saw much else. She located an oil-lamp, some pine-wood, and a corner cupboard. In a few moments the lamp was lit, the stove refilled with fuel, and she was stripping Wayland’s wet coat from his back, cheerily discoursing as she did so. “Here’s one of Tony’s old jackets, put that on while I see if I can’t find some dry stockings for you. Sit right down here by the stove; put your feet in the oven. I’ll have a fire in a jiffy. There, that’s right. Now I’ll start the coffee-pot.” She soon found the coffee, but it was unground. “Wonder, where he keeps his coffee-mill.” She rummaged about for a few minutes, then gave up the search. “Well, no matter, here’s the coffee, and here’s a hammer. One of the laws of the trail is this: If you can’t do a thing one way, do it another.”