Joyous and free;
Light of the prairie
Home was she-ee.”
But they made slower progress among the trees, thin though these were. They saw fox-tracks, and sighted a wolf in the distance. The second night was colder, but Garry collected dead wood, and coaxed a fire, and they were content. They woke to find that snow had fallen while they slept, to the depth of a couple of inches—no more. The clouds had gone, and the sun rose at last on a dazzling world. Before the second hour of daylight they had emerged from the narrow belt of trees and were once more in rolling, open country.
The third day was absolutely uneventful, still, brief, radiant. But the temperature dropped, and Kob’s spirits seemed to fall with it. He complained of pains in his limbs; twice Garry had to stop, set up tent and stove, and warm him back to life. In Garry himself there was no change beyond a certain rigidity, a grim and watchful silence, that told the fight was on. He set up the tent that night in a hollow, scooped in a drift of deep snow. They were warm. But in the morning, tent and sleeping-bags were stiff as boards, all but impossible to stow on the sledge. The temperature was nearly forty below zero.
Again, there was no wind, not a cloud in the almost violet sky; nothing but a vast, white circle that enclosed them, seeming to move as they moved. Kob was quiet and drowsy. Garry’s attention was focussed on him; so intense was his care of Kob that there seemed to be some mysterious physical sympathy set up between them; so that Garry knew when Kob’s left foot was frozen before Kob did himself. It took Garry two hours to bring the foot round. They travelled on under a moon rounding to the full. Sometimes their shadows streamed ink-black behind them; sometimes these shadows shot suddenly to the front, as the aurora blazed and shook gigantic spears that dimmed the moon. The rigidity in Garry became more noticeable. He went on untiring, but bought every mile at the price of that intense watchfulness. He did nothing but pull the sledge and care for Kob, in a single monotony of effort. And all the time he was fighting—fighting for all he was worth.
They camped for their fourth night under an outcrop of rock. Garry was very silent. He slept restlessly, and once or twice groaned in his sleep. Clouds rolled up from the south, covered the moon and the great arching stars, and the temperature rose immediately. But the North had struck at them.
They started in a soft, grey twilight, under those merciful low clouds, for the fifth day of Garry’s fight. Kob was cheerful again with the rising temperature, sat up among his furs, and talked of Fort Scarlett, and how nice it would be to lie up in hospital.
“You does your best for me, Garry, and you’re as white to me as a feller could be, but there’s lots you can’t do, stands to reason. Not but what you always does your best.”
“Yes,” said Garry, slowly, “I does my best for you.”