It was hard then not to be frantic in her efforts. As it was, she packed her stuff so loosely on the planking that she had to repack it, and she started without putting on her snowshoes, and floundered fifty yards before she discovered that omission. The snow was now falling fast, darkling the sky and hiding everything but objects close at hand, and she had to use all of her wits to determine her direction: she knew she must go down a long slope and then up to the ridge, and it came to her as a happy inspiration that if she bore to the left she might strike some recognizable vestige of her morning’s trail. She had read of people walking in circles when they have no light or guidance, and that troubled her until she bethought herself of the little compass on her watch chain. By that she kept her direction. She wished very much she had timed herself across the waste, so that she could tell when she approached the ridge.
Soon her back and shoulders were aching violently, and the rope across her chest was tugging like some evil-tempered thing. But she did not dare to rest. The snow was now falling thick and fast; the flakes traced white spirals and made her head spin, so that she was constantly falling away to the southwestward and then correcting herself by the compass. She tried to think how this zig-zagging might affect her course, but the snow whirls confused her mind and a growing anxiety would not let her pause to think.
Marjorie felt blinded; it seemed to be snowing inside her eyes so that she wanted to rub them. Soon the ground must rise to the ridge, she told herself; it must surely rise. Then the sledge came bumping at her heels and she perceived that she was going down hill. She consulted the compass and found she was facing south. She turned sharply to the right again. The snowfall became a noiseless, pitiless torture to sight and mind.
The sledge behind her struggled to hold her back, and the snow balled under her snowshoes. She wanted to stop and rest, take thought, sit for a moment. She struggled with herself and kept on. She tried walking with shut eyes, and tripped and came near sprawling. “Oh God!” she cried, “Oh God!” too stupefied for more [v]articulate prayers. She was leaden with fatigue.
Would the rise of the ground to the ribs of rock never come?
A figure, black and erect, stood in front of her suddenly, and beyond appeared a group of black, straight antagonists. She staggered on toward them, gripping her rifle with some muddled idea of defense, and in another moment she was brushing against the branches of a stunted fir, which shed thick lumps of snow upon her feet. What trees were these? Had she ever passed any trees? No! There were no trees on her way to Trafford.
At that Marjorie began whimpering like a tormented child. But even as she wept, she turned her sledge about to follow the edge of the wood. She was too much downhill, she thought, and must bear up again.
She left the trees behind, made an angle uphill to the right, and was presently among trees again. Again she left them and again came back to them. She screamed with anger and twitched her sledge along. She wiped at the snowstorm with her arm as though to wipe it away; she wanted to stamp on the universe.
And she ached, she ached.
Suddenly something caught her eye ahead, something that gleamed; it was exactly like a long, bare, rather pinkish bone standing erect on the ground. Just because it was strange and queer she ran forward to it. As she came nearer, she perceived that it was a streak of barked trunk; a branch had been torn off a pine tree and the bark stripped down to the root. And then came another, poking its pinkish wounds above the snow. And there were chips! This filled her with wonder. Some one had been cutting wood! There must be Indians or trappers near, she thought, and of a sudden realized that the wood-cutter could be none other than herself.