“I hate to give up,” muttered Hamp, doggedly. “I Started for the storehouse, and I want to reach it.”
“But that tree is right in the road now,” declared Jerry. “The storehouse is on the other side of it. We can’t get through, and it will be a risky thing to try to tunnel around it.”
Hamp was not satisfied until he had crawled forward several feet. Then a perfect network of interlacing branches drove him reluctantly back.
“I thought so,” said Jerry. “There is only one thing to do, fellows. We must return to the cabin and wait until morning. By then the storm may be over. At any rate, the snow will be more solid and compact, and won’t cave in so easily. We will be able to make a tunnel clear around the tree, and get at the storehouse from the lower side.”
This was sound logic, and as no one could suggest a better plan, the boys started despondently back through the tunnel, crawling in single file.
They reached the end without mishap, and were heartily glad to find themselves in the snug shelter of the cabin once more.
Brick looked at his watch and wound it up. It was just half-past eight o’clock in the evening. Of course, the boys were not sleepy, and it looked as though they would have to turn night into day. They were savagely hungry, and longingly eyed the cartridge box that held the scanty remnants of their supper. But they put the temptation aside with stern fortitude, knowing that greater need would come with the morning.
All hands prudently exchanged their damp clothes for dry ones, and then huddled together under blankets in a corner of the cabin.
It was four o’clock when the boys finally dropped off to sleep, overcome more by mental than physical exhaustion. They rested soundly, and awoke to find that another day had dawned—dawned hours before, for Brick’s watch indicated eleven o’clock. The hands could be barely seen by the meager gray light that filtered through a crevice in the roof.
The storm was over—the wind, part of it, at least. The silence was oppressive. Evidently the drifted snow was piled many feet above the cabin. What scanty light penetrated to the boys filtered through the outspreading branches of the fallen pine.