CHAPTER XVIII
LAC TREMBLANT
"Across the ice that never froze
The snow that never bore,
My love ran out to follow me—
To follow to the shore."
The Day the World Went Mad.
It may be true that I swore aloud; but what I meant by it was more like praying. Over me was the blue winter sky and the gold sun; under me the treacherous spread of the lake that was no lake, that one misstep might send me through, to God knew what hideous depth of unfrozen water, or bare, bone-shattering stone; behind me were Macartney and Macartney's men; and close up to me, nearer every second, my Paulette, my dream girl who had never been mine. There was nothing to do for both of us but to keep on crossing Lac Tremblant. Missteps might be death, but turning back was worse—for her, anyway.
I yelled, "Keep wide! Get abreast of me—don't take any direction you don't see me take. But keep wide!" Because what held one of us would never hold two, and behind me, running in my tracks——Well, even a light girl would not run long!
Paulette only screamed, "Yes. Keep on! They're coming!" She may have needed her breath, I don't know; but she didn't run like it. She ran like a deer, with my own flat, heel-dragging stride on the snowshoes I had not thought she knew how to use. One more shot came after us. I yelled again to her to keep wide and heard her sheer off a little to obey me; but she still ran behind me. God knows I didn't realize, till afterwards, that it was to keep Macartney from shooting me. I didn't even wonder why Collins and Dunn weren't firing into the brown of Macartney's men with Marcia's rifle and popgun. I was too busy watching the snow surfaces before me.
There was a difference in them. I can't explain what, but a difference between where there was water to buoy the snow, and where it lay on shell ice. The open black holes where there was nothing at all any one could see, and I didn't worry over them. I only knew we must run over water, or the light stuff under us would let us through. I kept moving my hand in infinitesimal signals to Paulette, and God knows she was quick at understanding. My heart was in my mouth for her, but she never made a mistake, or a stumble where a stumble would have meant the end. She called to me suddenly; something that sounded like, "They're coming!"