Now her gymnasium training, together with the cool nerve inherited from her father, stood her in good stead. Leaping to a tree, she seized the lowest branch and swung herself up.
Not a second too soon. The irate monster passed directly beneath her.
As he passed, she fancied she smelled fire, shot from his nostrils. “What creature in these wilds could be like that?” she asked herself. “He’s not a bear, nor a moose. He’s too large for any other creature.”
Here, surely, was a conundrum. It was not long in solving. As the creature turned about for one more vain charge she saw him clearly in the moonlight.
“A buffalo!” she exclaimed. “A buffalo in this frozen land! How—how impossible!” That he was indeed a buffalo and a very real one, the beast proceeded to demonstrate by pawing and bellowing beneath her tree.
“He’ll keep me here all night. I’ll freeze!” she thought, half in despair. “This morning it was forty below, and to-night it is just as cold.”
At last, taking a stronger grip on her nerves, she climbed a little higher, selected a stout branch and settled down upon it to think things through.
She was, she knew, more than a mile from camp. No amount of calling would bring aid. In time her father would miss her and there would be a search. But in the North people remain up at all hours. Her friends might not think of retiring for three hours. Her time was her own. They would not think it strange that she was not there.
“In the meantime I shall freeze,” she told herself. In spite of her best efforts at self-control, a touch of the tragic crept into her voice. Already her feet, clad only in wool stockings and moose-hide moccasins, were beginning to feel uncomfortable.
“Stop feeling after a while.” She shuddered. “Then they will be frozen.