“Back where to? What you thought of, Steve?”
“Back to where we left that feller, an’ save his blasted life! He ain’t seen us, nor heard our voices. He don’t know who beaned ’im and drug ’im around. Let’s go back an’ save his damn life and git in right with him.”
“No use, Steve! He’d be lost an’ froze dead before we could git there—even if we could find him. He’s the kind will bust right out of the hut the minute he gits his wits back—right out into the storm on his busted rackets—an’ git to runnin’ around in a circle inside ten minutes. That’s his kind. Mind how he jumped us, an’ him tied an’ blindfolded? A fightin’ fool! When he sticks in a drift he’ll tear the woods to pieces—an’ himself. We’d be too late, Steve. Reckon we best forgit all about that business. Reckon we’re in for trouble enough without goin’ back an’ foolin’ around that section of the woods.”
“I guess he won’t—I guess he’s tougher’n you figger on. I’m goin’ back, anyhow.”
So Steve headed back for the hut with the broken roof by the shortest way through the blinding curtains of moist snow. Steve was a smart woodsman under normal conditions—but now the conditions were not normal. Never before had he traveled far in so thick a fall of snow. Never before had he undertaken a journey alone with panic in his heart and doubt in his mind. He had gone a mile before being conscious of the panic and the doubt. After that, they grew with devilish rapidity.
Steve didn’t find the hut wherein he and his father had left the stranger. He didn’t come within miles of it. At last the snow ceased to fall; and soon after that—or was it an hour after?—he came upon a hole in the snow and the ashes and black sticks of a spent fire in the bottom of the hole. The ashes were still warm. These things puzzled and frightened him. He gave up all thought of finding the hut. He walked for a long time, walked meaningless miles, beneath a clearing sky, looking for familiar landmarks. Suddenly a bitter wind swooped down and filled earth and sky with flying snow.
Mrs. Dent put Joe to bed. The girl fell into a deep sleep—but she woke up a little later for long enough to drink and eat from a bountiful tray and answer a few of Mrs. Dent’s eager and illuminating questions. Robert Vane took a few snatches of sleep in the rocking chair, and talked and smoked and drank tea between naps. He answered questions as they came, without thought or care. He felt fine. He loved the whole world, but this part of it more than the rest of it. And when supper was ready he pulled his chair up to the table, and drank coffee as if he had never heard of tea, and ate buckwheat pancakes and fried pork and hot biscuits and doughtnuts and Washington pie. There was nothing the matter with Robert Vane. Everything was right with him.
The wind swished around the corners of the little house, harsh and heavy with its burdens of dry snow. It slashed the roof and lashed the blinded windows and shouldered the door. It whistled in the chimney and under the eaves; and from the surrounding forest came the muffled roar of it like surf along a reef.
“Hark!” exclaimed Mrs. Dent. “What was that?”
“The wind,” said Larry. “Did you expect a brass band?”