Well for her that she did. Later it was to prove the key to a mystery, an entirely new mystery which had as yet not appeared above their horizon, but was, in a way, associated with the mystery of the purple flame.
“Listen!” said Marian, as they came nearer to the mouth of the cave, “I do believe the storm is passing. Perhaps we can get off the mountain to-day. Oh, Attatak! We’ll win yet! Won’t that be glorious?”
It was true; the storm was passing. Attatak was dispatched to investigate, and soon came hurrying back with the report that they could be on their way as soon as they had eaten breakfast and packed.
Marian was possessed with a wild desire to inspect her newly discovered treasure—to wash, scrub and scrape it and try to discover how it was made and what it was made of. Yet she realized that any delay for such a cause would be all but criminal folly. So, after a hasty breakfast, she rubbed as much dust as she could from the strange treasures and packed them carefully in the folds of the sleeping bags.
Soon the girls found themselves beside their deer, picking their way cautiously forward over the remaining distance to the divide; then quite as cautiously they started down the other side.
During the day they halted for a cold lunch while their reindeer fed on a broad plateau, a protected place where they were safe from the wild blizzards of the peaks that loomed far above them.
“From now on,” said Marian, “there will be little rest for us. Our bold stroke has saved us nothing. It is now a question of whether reindeer are trustworthy steeds in the Arctic; also whether girls are capable of solving problems, and of enduring many hardships. As for me,” she shook her fist in the general direction of Scarberry’s herd, “I’ll say they are. We’ll win! See if we don’t!”
To this declaration Attatak uttered an “Eh-eh,” which to Marian sounded like a fervent “Amen!”
CHAPTER XIII
THE LONG TRAIL
At nightfall of the following day, worn from the constant travel, and walking as if in their sleep, the two girls came to the junction of the two forks of a modest sized river. The frozen stream, coated as it was by a hard crust of snow, had given them a perfect trail over the last ten miles of travel. Before that they had crossed endless tiers of low-lying hills whose hard packed and treacherously slippery sides had brought grief to them and to their reindeer. Twice an overturned sled had dragged a reindeer off his feet, and reindeer, sled and driver had gone rolling and tumbling down the hill to be piled in a heap in the gully below.