Harding of Allenwood

by Harold Bindloss

A bank of snow kept off the stinging wind; there was, fortunately, no lack of fuel, and, sitting close to the pile of snapping branches, the men were fairly warm; but the dark pines were wailing mournfully and thick gloom encroached upon the narrow ring of light. The eddying smoke leaped out of it and vanished with startling suddenness. Gerald's shoulders ached from the weight of his pack, and the back of one leg was sore. He must be careful of it, because he had a long way to go, and men were sometimes lamed by snowshoe trouble.

The two packers sat, for the most part, smoking silently. Gerald now and then gave them a pleasant word, but he did not wish their relations to become friendly, as it was not advisable that they should ask him questions about the march. Indeed, he shrank from thinking of it as he listened to the savage wind in the pine-tops and glanced at the surrounding darkness. The wilderness is daunting in winter, even to those who know it best; but Gerald with his gambler's instincts was willing to take a risk. If he went home with the surveyor, ruin awaited him.

For a time he sat drowsily enjoying the rest and warmth, and then, lying down on a layer of spruce-twigs, he went to sleep. But the cold wakened him. One of the packers got up, grumbling, and threw more branches on the fire, and Gerald went to sleep again.

Starting shortly before daylight, they were met by blinding snow, but they struggled on all day across a rocky elevation. The snow clogged their eyelashes and lashed their tingling cheeks until the pain was nearly unbearable; still, that was better than feeling them sink into dangerous insensibility. They must go on while progress was possible. The loss of a day or two might prove fatal, and there was a chance of their getting worse weather.

It overtook them two days later when they sat shivering in camp with the snow flying past their heads and an icy blizzard snapping rotten branches from the buffeted trees. Twigs hurtled about their ears; the woods was filled with a roar like the sea; the smoke was blinding to lee of the fire, and its heat could hardly reach them a yard to windward. Gerald drank a quart of nearly boiling black tea, but he could not keep warm. There was no feeling in his feet, and his hands were too numbed to button his ragged coat, which had fallen open. When he tried to smoke, his pipe was frozen, and as he crouched beneath the snow-bank he wondered dully whether he should change his plans and face the worst his creditors could do.

By altering his course northerly when he resumed the march he might still strike the surveyor's line, but after another day or two it would be too late. Still, he thought of his father's fury and the shares that were bound to rise. If he were disowned, he must fall back upon surveying for a livelihood. It was unthinkable that he should spend the winter in the icy wilds, and the summer in portaging canoes over rocky hills and dragging the measuring chain through mosquito haunted bush. He could not see how he was to avoid exposure when Davies claimed his loan; but something might turn up, and he was sanguine enough to be content if he could put off the day of reckoning.

The blizzard continued the next morning and no one could leave camp; indeed, Gerald imagined that death would have struck down the strongest of them in an hour. But the wind fell at night, and when dawn broke they set out again in Arctic frost. One could make good progress in the calm air, though the glitter was blinding when the sun climbed the cloudless sky as they followed a winding stream. Then a lake offered a smooth path, and they had made a good march when dark fell.

In the night it grew cloudy and the temperature rose, and when they started at daybreak they were hindered by loose, fresh snow. At noon they stopped exhausted after covering a few miles; and the next day the going was not much better, for they were forced to flounder through a tangle of blown-down trees. It was only here and there that the pines and spruces could find sufficient moisture among the rocks, and they died and fell across each other in a dry summer.

On the seventh day after leaving the settlement the three men plodded wearily through thin forest as the gloomy evening closed in. Their shoulders were sore from the pack-straps, the backs of their legs ached with swinging the big snowshoes, and all were hungry and moody. Provisions were getting low, and they had been compelled to cut down rations. Now the cold was Arctic, and a lowering, steel-gray sky showed between the whitened tops of the trees. The packers had been anxiously looking for blaze-marks all afternoon; and Gerald, knowing they would not find them, felt his courage sink. He was numb with cold, and he dully wondered whether he had taken too great a risk.

Presently one of the men, who had been searching some distance to the right, joined his comrade. They spoke together and then turned back to meet Gerald.