“Isn’t it wonderful to think that the great struggle is over?” whispered Marian, contentedly, as they lounged on their sleeping bags an hour later. “This is really the worst of it, I hope. Fort Jarvis can’t be more than four days away now, over a smoother down trail.”
“If only we are in time!” sighed Patsy.
“We must be. Oh, we must!” exclaimed Marian passionately. “Surely it would be too much to struggle as we have, and then lose!”
Before Marian fell asleep she set her mind to meet any outcome of their adventure. She thought of the wonderful opportunities the sale of the herd would bring to her father and herself. Near some splendid school they must rent a bungalow. There she would keep house for him and go to school. In her mind she saw the wonderful roses that bloomed around their door-step, and pictured the glorious sunsets they would view from their back door.
“Perhaps, too,” she told herself, “Patsy could live with us for a year or two and attend my school.”
When she had pictured all this, she saw in her mind that the race had been lost; that Scarberry had sold his herd to the Canadian officials; that she was to turn the heads of her leading reindeer toward the home tundra.
With great difficulty at first, but with ever increasing enthusiasm, in her imagination she drove the herd all the way back to enter once more upon the wild, free, life of the herder.
“It really does not matter,” she told herself; “it’s really only for father. He is so lonely down there all by himself.”
In her heart of hearts she knew that it did matter, mattered a very great deal indeed. Brave girl that she was, she only prepared her mind for the shock that would come if the race were really lost.
Four days later the two girls found themselves approaching a small village of log cabins and long, low-lying buildings. This was Fort Jarvis. They had made the remainder of the journey in safety. Leaving their herd some ten miles from the Fort, where the deer would be safe, they had tramped in on snowshoes.