Then there was a sudden swish of a whip cutting the cold air and with a fresh tinkling of bells the shaggy pony plunged ahead. Five minutes afterwards with an instinctive stiffening of his forelegs he started sliding slowly down a steep embankment, where the road apparently ended, dragging his load behind him and only stopping on finally reaching the low ground and finding his sleigh had overturned.
For a while the unusual stillness was oppressive. But a little later there followed a movement and then an unsteady voice calling, “Steady, Fire Star,” as a tall girl in a gray hood and coat covered all over with snow came crawling forth from the uppermost side of the sleigh and immediately began pulling at it with trembling hands.
“Princess, Princess, please speak or move! Oh, it is all my fault. I should never have let you attempt it; I am the older and even——”
A little smothered sound and a slight disturbance under an immense fur rug interrupted her: “I can’t speak, Esther, until I get some of this snow out of my mouth and I can’t move until this grocery store is lifted off me. I’m—I’m the under side of things; there are ten pounds of sugar and a sack of flour and all the week’s camping supplies between me and the gay world.” A break in the cheerful tones ended these words and there was no further stirring, but Esther Clark failed to notice this, as she first lifted the rug which had almost covered up Betty Ashton and then helped her to sit upright, looking more of a Snow Princess than even the weather justified. For all about her there were small mounds of sugar and flour white as the snow itself and dissolving like dew. While Betty’s seal cap and coat were encrusted in ice and the snow hung from her brows and lashes, indeed her face, usually so brilliantly colored, was now almost as pale.
Esther was again tugging at the overturned sleigh trying to set it upright, the pony waiting motionless except for turning his head as if with the suggestion that matters be hurried along.
“I could manage a great deal better, Betty, if you would help me,” Esther protested a little indignantly. “I know the girls at Sunrise cabin are getting dreadfully worried over our being so late in arriving at home.”
Betty shivered. “I am getting a bit worried myself,” she agreed, “and I might as well confess to you, Esther, that I haven’t the faintest idea where we are, nor how far from the village or our camp. This snow has completely mixed me up; and I haven’t sprained my ankle, of course, or broken it or done anything quite so silly, but my foot does hurt most awfully and I know I never can stand up on it again and—and—if I wasn’t a Camp Fire girl about to be made a Torch Bearer I’d like to weep and weep until I melted away into a beautiful iceberg.” And then in spite of her brave fooling Betty did blink and choke, but only for an instant, for the sight of her companion’s face made her smile again.
“The runner of our sleigh has snapped in two,” Esther next announced in accents of despair after having partially dragged the sleigh upright, although one runner still remained imbedded several inches deeper than the other in the drift of snow which had caused their disaster.
Betty held up both hands. “I believe it never rains but it pours,” she said a little mockingly; “but what about the snow? I am sorry I was so obstinate, dear. It is nice to be sorry when the deed is done, isn’t it? I suppose I should never have attempted driving back to Sunrise Hill on such an evening, but then we did need our groceries so terribly in camp and I was afraid nobody would bring them to-morrow. And, well, as I have gotten you into this scrape I must get you out of it.”
So by clinging with both hands to Esther, Betty Ashton, by sheer force of will, did manage to rise on the one sound foot and then putting the injured one on the ground she stood wavering for a second. “I’m thinking, Esther, so please don’t interrupt me for a moment,” she gasped as soon as she found breath. “I can’t but feel that this is our first real emergency since we started our camp fire in the woods this winter. If we only are able to get out of it successfully, why—why, won’t Polly be envious?”