“Eh-eh,” Attatak whispered.
Stepping gingerly out of the ashes of the mysterious camp-fire, they again started forward.
The current of air now became less and less strong, and finally when Marian again tried the candle it burned with a flickering blaze.
A glance about told them they were now between narrow dark walls, that the ceiling was very high, and there was nothing beneath their feet but rock.
The yellow glow of light cheered them. If there were wolves they had made no sound; the gleam of their eyes had not been seen. If the spirits of the men who had built that long extinguished fire still haunted the place, the light would drive them away. Attatak assured Marian of that.
With one candle securely set in a rocky recess, and with another close at hand, Attatak was even willing to remain in the cave while Marian brought the reindeer in a little way and carried the articles necessary for a meal to the back of the cave.
“There is no moss on this barren mountain,” Marian sighed. “Our reindeer must go hungry to-night, but once we are off the mountain they shall have a grand feast.”
By the time they had made a small fire on the floor of the cave and had finished their supper, night had closed in upon their mountain world. Darkness came quickly, deepened tenfold by the wild storm that appeared to redouble its fury at every fresh blast. The darkness without vied with the bleakness of the cave until both were one. Such a storm as it was! Born and reared on the coast of Alaska, Marian had never before experienced anything that approached it in its shrieking violence. She did not wonder now that the mountains appeared to smoke with sweeping snow. She shivered as she thought what it would have meant had they not found the cave.
“Why,” she said to Attatak, “we should have been caught up by the wind like two bits of snow and hurled over the mountain peak.”
The two girls walked to the mouth of the cave and for a moment stood peering into the night. The whistle and howl of the wind was deafening. “Whew—whoo—whoo—whe-w—w-o—,” how it did howl! The very rock ribbed mountain seemed to shake from the violence of it.