The entrance was not wide, perhaps twelve feet across, but it was fully as high as it was broad.
“Our deer can come in, too,” whispered Marian, “if it goes back far enough.”
“If there are no wolves,” said Attatak with a shudder.
“Wolves?” Marian had not thought of that. “You wait here,” she whispered. “I’ll go for the rifle.”
“No! No!” Attatak gripped her arm until it hurt. “I will go, too.”
So back out of the cave they felt their way, now tripping over rocks that rolled away with a hollow sound like distant thunder, now brushing the wall, till they came at last to the open air.
Marian hated all this delay. Famished with hunger, chilled to the very marrow, and weary enough to drop, she longed for the warmth of the fire she hoped they might light, for the food they would warm over it, and the comforting rest that would follow. Yet she realized that the utmost caution must be taken. Wolves, once driven from a cave, might stampede their reindeer and lose them forever in the mountains. Without reindeer they should have great trouble in getting back to camp; the Agent would go on his way ignorant of their dilemma; their pasture land would be lost, and perhaps their herd with it.
The rifle securely gripped in the hands of Attatak, who was the surer shot of the two, they again started into the cave. Strange to say, once the rifle was in her grasp, Attatak became the bravest of the brave.
Marian carried a candle in one hand, and in the other a block of safety matches. The candle was not lighted. So drafty was the entrance that no candle would stay lighted. Each step she hoped would bring them to a place where the draft would not extinguish her candle. But in this she was disappointed.
“It’s a windy cavern,” she said. “Must be an entrance at each end.”