“Sour-dough flapjacks and maple syrup.”
“Um-um! Make me ten,” exclaimed Patsy, redoubling her efforts to get herself dressed.
That night Marian made a discovery that set her nerves a-tremble to the very roots of her hair and, in spite of the Arctic chill, brought beads of perspiration out on the tip of her nose.
As on the previous night, they had camped out upon the open tundra. This night, however, they had found a sheltered spot beside a clump of willows that lined a stream. The stream ran between low, rolling hills. Over those hills they had been passing when darkness fell. Now, as Marian crept into the sleeping bag, she saw the nearer hills rising like cathedral domes above her. She heard the ceaseless rustle of willow leaves that, caught by an early frost, still clung to their branches. This rustle, together with the faint breeze that fanned her cheeks, had all but lulled her to sleep. Suddenly she sat upright.
“It couldn’t be!” she exclaimed. Then, a moment later, she added:
“But, yes—there it is again. Who would believe it? Lightning in the Arctic, and on such a night as this. Twenty below zero and clear as a bell! Not a cloud in sight.”
Rubbing her brow to clear her mind from the cobweb of dreams that had been forming there, she stared again at the crest of the hill.
Then, swiftly, silently, that she might not waken her cousin, she crept from the sleeping bag. Donning her fur parka and drawing on knickers and deerskin boots, she hurried away from camp and up the hill, thinking as she did so:
“That’s not lightning. I don’t know what it is, but in the name of all that’s good, I’m going to come nearer solving that mystery than ever I did before.”
Half way up the hill she found a snow blown gully, and up this she crept, half hidden by the shadows. Nearing the crest, a half mile from her camp, she dropped on hands and knees and crawled forward a hundred yards. Then, like some hunter who has stolen upon his game, she propped herself on her elbows and stared straight ahead.