The first thing of which David was conscious was that his strength was going amazingly fast. It seemed but a moment since he had started, and the trapper was climbing very slowly; yet David began to find it unbelievably hard to pull one foot after the other. Gritting his teeth, he stumbled on a few yards farther. Then he fell, picked himself up, and fell again. The third time the trapper helped him to his feet, and, coming behind him, he put a strong hand at David’s back and pushed. They struggled on this way for another ten minutes until David fell again. This time it was the trapper’s strength alone which righted him, for David’s had entirely gone. He stood looking with dazed eyes into the trapper’s, ashamed and wholly spent.
“It is all right. It is nothing to be ashamed of.” The trapper’s voice seemed to come from very far away. “You have climbed many lengths farther than I expected. Now you shall see how Nicholas Bassaraba can pack a hundred pounds when he is guiding for a friend.”
He stooped and lifted David on his back, drawing the boy’s arms well over his shoulders, and slipping his own firmly under the boy’s feet.
That was the last David knew until he felt the ground under his feet again and blinked stupidly at the light Johanna was holding at the open door of the lodge.
“Laddy, laddy, wherever have ye been?”
He heard the distress in Johanna’s voice even through his own numbness, and tried to smile reassuringly.
“Barney’s been scouring the hill for ye this half-hour.”
“He has been to visit a friend, and the friend has brought him back safely,” said the trapper. And without another word he disappeared in the snow and the darkness.
VIII
THE CHRISTMAS THAT WAS NEARLY LOST
It snowed hard all the next day, so hard that even Barney did not venture out; and David spent his time between the kitchen, where Johanna was frosting the Christmas cake, and the woodshed, where Barney was making the “woodpile look mortal weary.”