Bill Carmody closed his eyes. The fine, sifting snow came and covered his body and the smaller body of the boy who was lashed firmly to his broad back—and all about him the blizzard howled and roared and moaned.
And it was night!
CHAPTER XLIII
IN CAMP AGAIN
The violence of the storm precluded the use of horses about the camp, and the trail that slanted from the clearing to the water-hole was soon drifted high with snow, rendering useless the heavy tank-sled. Fallon, who had been placed in temporary charge of the camp, told the men into water-shifts; barrels were lashed to strong sleds and man-hauled to the top of the bank, where the guide-rope had been run to the water-hole.
The men of the shift formed a long line reaching from the sled to the river, and the water dipped from the hole cut in the ice was passed from man to man in buckets to be dumped into the barrels and distributed between the stables, cook-shack, bunk-house, and "house."
Darkness had fallen when the men of the afternoon shift wallowed toward the river upon the last trip of the second day of the great blizzard. The roar of the wind as it hurled the frozen particles against their cold-benumbed faces drowned their muttered curses as, thirty strong, they pushed and hauled the cumbersome sled to the top of the bank. Seizing the buckets, they strung out, making their way down the steep slope with one hand on the guide-rope.
Suddenly the foremost man stumbled and fell. He scrambled profanely to his knees and began feeling about in the thick darkness for his bucket. His mittened hand came into contact with the object which, protruding from the snow, had tripped him, and with a vicious wrench he endeavored to remove it from the trail. It yielded a little, but remained firmly imbedded.
With a wild yell he forgot his bucket and began digging and clawing in the snow, for the object he grasped was the bent ash edge of a snowshoe, and firmly lashed in the center of the webbing was the moccasined foot of a man.