She was dazed for a few moments by the fall, but soon realized that she was not hurt. She arose and pushed her way in a zigzag course, trying to mount the hillside down which she had fallen.
CHAPTER XIV
IN THE WILDERNESS
Cora was lost!
For an hour past she had refused to admit it to herself. The utmost that she would concede was that she had become separated from her party. But that of course often happened, was bound to happen again and again, when one was out in the woods.
Jack and the rest must be looking for her as eagerly as she was for them. How heartily they would laugh and joke over the needless fears that had assailed her when she first realized that she was alone.
So she had reasoned with herself, thrusting resolutely into the background the terrible dread that kept trying to get possession of her mind, marshaling all the pathetic sophistries by which those in similar plight have tried to delude themselves from the beginning of the world. But with every moment that passed she grew more certain of the truth, until she seated herself on a fallen tree, and, burying her face in her hands, gave way to the tears she tried in vain to hold back.
There was no use in blinking the fact. She was lost in the Adirondack wilderness, cut off for the time being from her friends, doomed perhaps to suffer incredible hardships before she should be rescued. She shuddered as she recalled instances of others, lost in that vast region, strong men, some of them, for whom rescue had arrived too late.
She pressed her fingers into her throbbing temples and tried to think. But her head swam, and it was only by a strong exertion of her will that she was able to pull herself together. It was some minutes before she had herself well in hand and was able to bring all her powers to bear on the problem before her. That problem had suddenly assumed gigantic proportions. Unless she solved it correctly, her life might pay the penalty.
“What shall I do?” she asked herself. “What shall I do?”
North, east, south, west, wherever she looked she could see nothing resembling a trail. In all that tangle of trees, rocks and undergrowth there was no indication that the foot of man had ever disturbed its solitude. And as Cora looked wildly about her, the forest seemed to mock her with a lurking smile as though taunting her helplessness.