But mother set her mouth in a thin line.
"Pete," said she, "is saved."
Next time we come mother was all alone.
"'The Lord gave,'" she says, "'and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord,' but it's getting kind of monotonous."
She hadn't much to say then, she didn't seem to care, but was just numb. He wrapped her up warm on the komatik, with just a sack of clothes, her Bible, and the album of photos from Nova Scotia, yes, and the china dogs she carried in her arms. Father broke the trail ahead, I took the gee pole, and when day came, we made the winter tilt. There mother kep' house just as she would at home, so clean we was almost scared to step indoors. We never had such grub, but she wouldn't put us in the wrong or set up nights confessing father's sins. She didn't care any more.
It was along in March or maybe April that father was away in coarse weather, making the round of his traps. He didn't come back. There'd been a blizzard, a wolf-howling hurricane, blowing out a lane of bare ground round the back of the cabin, while the big drift piled higher and packed harder, until the comb of it grew out above our roof like a sea breaker, froze so you could walk on the overhang. And just between dark and duckish father's husky team came back without him.
I don't reckon I was more'n ten or eleven years old, but you see, this Labrador is kind of serious with us, and makes even kids act responsible. Go easy, and there's famine, freezing, blackleg, all sorts of reasons against laziness. It sort of educates.
Mother was worse than silent. There was something about her that scared me more than anything outdoors. In the morning her eye kep' following me as if to say, "Go find your father." Surely it was up to me, and if I wasn't big enough to drive the huskies or pack father's gun, I thought I could manage afoot to tote his four-pound ax. She beckoned me to her and kissed me—just that once in ten years, and I was quick through the door, out of reach, lest she should see me mighty near to cryin'.
It was all very well showing off brave before mother, but when I got outside, any excuse would have been enough for going back. I wished I'd left the matches behind, but I hadn't. I wished the snow would be too soft, but it was hard as sand. I wished I wasn't a coward, and the bush didn't look so wolfy, and what if I met up with the Eskimo devil! Oh, I was surely the scaredest lil' boy, and dead certain I'd get lost. There was nobody to see if I sat down and cried under father's lob-stick, but I was too durned frightened, because the upper branches looked like arms with claws. Then I went on because I was going, and there was father's trail blazed on past Bake-apple Marsh. The little trees, a cut here, a slash there, the top of a tree lopped and hanging, then Big Boulder, Johnny Boulder, Small Boulder, cross the crick, first deadfall, more lops, a number-one trap empty—how well I remember even now. The way was as plain as streets, and the sun shining warm as he looked over into the valley.
Then I saw a man's mitt, an old buckskin mitt sticking up out of the snow. Father had dropped his mitt, and without that his hand would be froze. When I found him, how glad he'd be to get it!