“I know it’s foolish,” she told herself, “but it’s exactly as if I had hung up my stocking on Christmas Eve, and then when Christmas morning came, had been obliged to seize my stocking without so much as a glance inside, and forced to start at once on a long journey which would offer me no opportunity to examine my stocking until the journey was at an end. But I won’t look; not now. It’s too cold. Brr-r,” she shivered.
As she drew herself farther down into the furry depths of her sleeping bag, she was reminded of the time she and Patsy had slept together beneath the stars. She could not help wishing that Patsy was with her now, sharing her sleeping bag, and looking up at the gleaming Milky Way.
She wondered vaguely how Patsy was getting on with the herd, but the thought did not greatly disturb her. She was about to drift off to the land of dreams, when a thought popped into her mind that brought her up wide awake again. Their morning’s course was not yet laid. What should it be?
She closed her eyes and tried to think. Then, like a flash, it came to her.
“It’s the hard way,” she whispered to herself. “Seems as if it were always the hard way that is safe and sure.”
The thought that had come to her was this: In order to reach their destination, they must still travel several miles north. The river they were following flowed southwest. To go south was to go out of their way. Were they to strike due north, across country, they might in the course of a day’s travel come to another stream which did not angle toward the south. That would mean infinitely hard travel over snow that was soft and yielding, and across tundra whose frozen caribou bogs were as rough as a cordwood road.
“It’s the long, hard way,” she sighed, “but we may win. If we follow this river we never can.”
Then, with all her problems put in order, she fell asleep.
CHAPTER XIV
MYSTERIOUS MUSIC
Two days later Marian and Attatak found themselves tramping slowly along behind their tired deer. It was night. Now and again the moon shot a golden beam of light across their trail. For the most part that trail was dark, overshadowed by great spruce and fir trees that stood out black against the whiteness of the snow, each tree seeming a gown clad monk—silent witnesses of their passing.