Trails that Cross in the Snow

“Are we lost, little brother?” said Mooka, shivering.

No need of the question, startling and terrible as it was from the lips of a child astray in the vast solitudes; for a great gale had swooped down from the Arctic, blotting out in clouds of whirling snow the world of plain and mountain and forest that, a moment before, had stretched wide and still before the little hunters’ eyes.

For an hour or more, running like startled deer, they had tried to follow their own snow-shoe trail back over the wide barrens into the friendly woods; but already the snow had filled it brim full, and whatever faint trace was left of the long raquettes was caught up by the gale and whirled away with a howl of exultation.  Before them as they ran every trail of wolf and caribou and snow-shoe, and every distant landmark, had vanished; the world was but a chaos of mad rolling snow clouds; and behind them—­Their stout little hearts trembled as they saw not a vestige of the trail they had just made.  With the great world itself, their own little tracks, as fast as they made them, were swept and blotted out of existence.  Like two sparrows that had dropped blinded and bewildered on the vast plain out of the snow cloud, they huddled together without one friendly sign to tell them whence they had come or whither they were going.  Worst of all, the instinct of direction, which often guides an Indian through the still fog or the darkest night, seemed benumbed by the cold and the tumult; and not even Old Tomah himself could have told north or south in the blinding storm.

Still they ran on bravely, bending to the fierce blasts, heading the wind as best they could, till Mooka, tripping a second time in a little hollow where a brook ran deep under the snow, and knowing now that they were but wandering in an endless circle, seized Noel’s arm and repeated her question: 

“Are we lost, little brother?”

And Noel, lost and bewildered, but gripping his bow in his fur mitten and peering here and there, like an old hunter, through the whirling flakes and rolling gusts to catch some landmark, some lofty crag or low tree-line that held steady in the mad dance of the world, still made confident Indian answer: 

“Noel not lost; Noel right here.  Camp lost, little sister.”

“Can we find um, little brother?”

“Oh, yes, we find um.  Find um bimeby, pretty soon quick now, after storm.”

“But storm last all night, and it’s soon dark.  Can we rest and not freeze?  Mooka tired and—­and frightened, little brother.”

“Sartin we rest; build um commoosie and sleep jus’ like bear in his den.  Oh, yes, sartin we rest good,” said Noel cheerfully.

“And the wolves, little brother?” whispered Mooka, looking back timidly into the wild waste out of which they had come.

“Never mind hwolves; nothing hunts in storm, little sister.  Come on, we must find um woods now.”