"Darling darling, Skunk's Misery is our only chance. Get up and come on!"
But she answered without moving.
"Want to tell you something first. The tunnel falling in wasn't all the reason I ran after you. I thought—thought Dick might not dare to shoot at you if I were between you and him, so——Oh, Nicky, don't kiss my horrid, chapped hands!"
But I was glad to hide my humbled face on them, remembering how I had stormed at her. I muttered, "Why didn't you tell me—out there on the lake?"
"Well, you were pretty unpleasant, and"—as I kissed her, my dear love I had never thought to touch—"oh, Nicky, how could I tell you? I said everything to you last night but 'Nicholas Dane Stretton, I love you!'—and all the notice you took was to kneel perfectly silent, with a face as long as your arm. You never even answered me, when I called you Nicky by mistake!"
I hadn't dared. But it was no time to be talking of those things. Let alone that my wet breeches had frozen till I felt as if my legs didn't belong to me, we had landed exactly where old Thompson had been drowned. I wanted to get away from there, quickly; leaving no more trail than was necessary. I looked round me and saw how to do it.
In front of us was the hole in the shore ice and all the smash and flurry where we had gone through. Where we had crawled on shore, from under the intact ice roof, was bare rock, wind-swept clean. It struck me that with a little management, and to a cursory inspector, it could look as though Paulette and I were drowned like Thompson. The snow had not piled on this side the lake as it had on ours. Detached rocks, few but practicable stepping-stones, lifted their bare bulk out of it, between us and the spruce bush we had to strike through to avoid the Halfway and Macartney's picket. Some kind of a trail we must leave to Skunk's Misery, but it need not begin here, in the first place Macartney would look, if he were alive to look anywhere. Paulette's eyes followed mine as I thought it, and she nodded. It was without a track of any sort, after the lake trail ended, that she and I stopped in the thick spruces and put on our snowshoes for the last lap of the way to Skunk's Misery.
My dream girl's trained young body served her well. As she stepped out after me, I would never have guessed she had run a yard. It was easy enough to avoid the Halfway, and unlikely that Macartney's men would ever discover our devious track in the thick bush. Crossing the Caraquet road was the only place where we had to leave a track in the open. I did the best I could with it by picking up Paulette, and carrying her and her shoes into thick bush again; but I could not honestly feel much pleasure in the result. Any one with any sense would know my sunken shoe marks had carried double, but it was the best I could do. It was no pleasure to me either to hear Paulette exclaim sharply, as I set her down:
"Nicky, I forgot! Dick can snowshoe after us, if he's alive. Charliet made a lot of snowshoes at odd times, to sell in Quebec if he ever went back there. They were piled up in the shed behind the kinty, and I believe Dick knew—though he didn't remember it in time to save his men. If he follows us I"—her lip curled in fear and hatred—"Oh, I hope he's dead!"
So did I. Yet somehow I had never felt it. "Well, if he isn't," I said roughly, "he'll have to do twenty-two miles to catch up to our five, and then some to Skunk's Misery. He couldn't make good enough time round the lake to catch us to-night, supposing he knew where we were going; even on the chance of him, we've got to have one night's rest. And our only place to find it is Skunk's Misery!"