“God’s great cathedral,” answered Marian.
Fortunately the trees were not too close together. There was room for the deer to pass between them. So, as before, the herd moved forward in a fairly compact mass.
“Going to be easy,” was Patsy’s comment after three hours had passed.
“I don’t know,” Marian shook her head in doubt, “I hope so, but you know an Alaskan who is used to barren hills and tundra, dreads a forest. I belong to the tundra, so I dread it, too.”
In spite of her fears, just at nightfall Marian found herself passing from beneath the last spruce tree and gazing away at rolling hills beyond.
She was just offering up a little prayer of thanksgiving, when some movement of the forward herd leaders attracted her attention.
“They’re stopping,” she said. “I wonder why?”
Instantly the vision of the morning flashed through her mind.
“The river!” she exclaimed in alarm. “If—if we can’t cross it, we’ll have to camp at the edge of the forest. And that is bad, very bad. Animals that are cowards, and slink away by day, become daring beasts of prey at night.”
A hurried race forward confirmed her worst suspicions; there, at her feet was a river, flanked on one side by willows and on the other by a steep bank. It was not a broad stream—she could throw a stone across it—but it did flow swiftly. Its powerful current had thus far defied the winter’s fiercest blasts. It was full to the brim with milky water and crowding cakes of ice. No creature could brave that torrent, and live.