Part 21 (1/2)
He was still dazed, suffering partially from snow blindness, but now he saw a line of st.u.r.dy cottonwoods and beyond it another line. The stream, he knew, flowed between. He went down the line a few hundred yards and came, as he had hoped, into more broken ground.
The creek ran between banks six or seven feet high, with a margin between stream and bank, and the cottonwoods on these banks were reinforced by some thick clumps of willows. Between the largest clump and the line of cottonwoods, with the bank as a shelter for the third side, was a comparatively clear s.p.a.ce.
The snow was only a few inches deep there, and d.i.c.k believed that he could make a shelter. He had, of course, brought his blanket with him in a tight roll on his back, and he was hopeful enough to have some thought of building a fire.
He stooped down to feel in the snow at a likely spot, and the act saved his life. A bullet, intended for his head, was buried in the snow beyond him, and a body falling down the bank lay quite still at his feet. It was the long Sioux. Wounded mortally, he had followed d.i.c.k, nevertheless, with mortal intent, crawling, perhaps most of the time, and with his last breath he had fired what he intended to be the fatal shot.
He was quite dead now, his power for evil gone forever. There could be no doubt about it. d.i.c.k at length forced himself to touch the face. It had grown cold and the pulse in the wrist was still. It yet gave him a feeling of horror to touch the Sioux, but his own struggle for life would be bitter and he could spare nothing. The dead warrior wore a good blanket, which d.i.c.k now took, together with his rifle and ammunition, but he left all the rest. Then he dragged the warrior from the sheltered s.p.a.ce to a deep snow bank, where he sank him out of sight. He even took the trouble to heap more snow upon him in the form of a burial, and he felt a great relief when he could no longer see the savage brown features.
He went back to his sheltered s.p.a.ce, and, upon the single unprotected side threw up a high wall of snow, so high that it would serve as a wind-break. Then he began to search for fallen brushwood. Meanwhile, it was turning colder, and a bitter wind began to moan across the plain.
Chapter XII The Fight with Nature
d.i.c.k realized suddenly that he was very cold. The terrible pursuit was over, ending mortally for the pursuer, but he was menaced by a new danger. Sheltered though his little valley was, he could, nevertheless, freeze to death in it with great ease.
In fact, he had begun already to s.h.i.+ver, and he noticed that while his feet were dry, the snow at last had soaked through his deerskin leggings and he was wet from knee to ankle. The snow had ceased, although a white mist hovered in a great circle and the chill of the wind was increasing steadily. He must have a fire or die.
He resumed his search, plunging into the snow banks under the cottonwoods and other trees, and at last he brought out dead boughs, which he broke into short pieces and piled in a heap in the center of the open s.p.a.ce. The wood was damp on the outside, of course, but he expected nothing better and was not discouraged.
Selecting a large, well-seasoned piece, he carefully cut away all the wet outside with his strong hunting knife. Then he whittled off large quant.i.ties of dry shavings, put them under the heap of boughs, and took from his inside a pocket a small package of lucifer matches.
d.i.c.k struck one of the matches across the heel of his shoe. No spark leaped up. Instead, his heart sank down, sank further, perhaps, than it had ever done before in his life. The match was wet. He took another from the pocket; it, too, was wet, and the next and the next and all. The damp from the snow, melted by the heat of his body, had penetrated his buckskin coat, although in the excitement of pursuit and combat he had not noticed it.
d.i.c.k was in despair. He turned to the snow a face no less white. Had he escaped all the dangers of the Sioux for this? To freeze to death merely because he did not have a dry lucifer match? The wind was still rising and it cut to his very marrow.
Reality and imagination were allied, and d.i.c.k was almost overpowered. He angrily thrust the wet little package of matches back into the inside pocket of his coat--his border training in economy had become so strong that even in the moment of despair he would throw away nothing--and his hand in the pocket came into contact with something else, small, hard, and polished.
d.i.c.k instantly felt a violent revulsion from despair to hope.
The small object was a sungla.s.s. That wagon train was well equipped. d.i.c.k had made salvage of two sungla.s.ses, and in a moment of forethought had given one to Albert, keeping the other for himself, each agreeing then and there to carry his always for the moment of need that might come.
d.i.c.k drew out the sungla.s.s and fingered it as one would a diamond of great size. Then he looked up. A brilliant sun was s.h.i.+ning beyond white, misty clouds, but its rays came through them dim and weak. The mists or, rather, cloudy vapor might lift or thin, and in that chance lay the result of his fight for life. While he waited a little, he stamped up and down violently, and threw his arms about with energy. It did not have much effect. The wet, cold, the raw kind that goes through, was in him and, despite all the power of his will, he s.h.i.+vered almost continually. But he persisted for a half hour and then became conscious of an increasing brightness about him. The white mist was not gone, but it was thinning greatly, and the rays of the sun fell on the snow brilliant and strong.
d.i.c.k took the dry stick again and sc.r.a.ped off particles of wood so fine that they were almost a power. He did not stop until he had a little heap more than an inch high. Meanwhile, the sun's rays, pouring through the whitish mist, continued to grow fuller and stronger.
d.i.c.k carefully polished the gla.s.s and held it at the right angle between the touchwood, that is, the sc.r.a.pings, and the sun. The rays pa.s.sing through the gla.s.s increased many times in power and struck directly upon the touchwood. d.i.c.k crouched over the wood in order to protect it from the wind, and watched, his breath constricted, while his life waited on the chance.
A minute, two minutes, three minutes, five pa.s.sed and then a spark appeared in the touchwood, and following it came a tiny flame. d.i.c.k shouted with joy and s.h.i.+fted his body a little to put shavings on the touchwood. An ill wind struck the feeble blaze, which was not yet strong enough to stand fanning into greater life, and it went out, leaving a little black ash to mark where the touchwood had been.
d.i.c.k's nerves were so much overwrought that he cried aloud again, and now it was a cry of despair, not of joy. He looked at the little black ash as if his last chance were gone, but his despair did not last long. He seized the dry stick again and sc.r.a.ped off another little pile of touchwood. Once more the sungla.s.s and once more the dreadful waiting, now longer than five minutes and nearer ten, while d.i.c.k waited in terrible fear, lest the sun itself should fail him, and go behind impenetrable clouds.
But the second spark came and after it, as before, followed the little flame. No turning aside now to allow a cruel chance to an ill wind. Instead, he bent down his body more closely than ever to protect the vital blaze, and, reaching out one cautious arm, fed it first with the smallest of the splinters, and then with the larger in an ascending scale.
Up leaped the flames, red and strong. d.i.c.k's body could not wholly protect them now, but they fought for themselves. When the wind shrieked and whipped against them, they waved back defiance, and the more the wind whipped them, the higher and stronger they grew.
The victory was with the flames, and d.i.c.k fed them with wood, almost with his body and soul, and all the time as the wind bent them over they crackled and ate deeper and deeper into the wood.
He could put on damp wood now. The flames merely leaped out, licked up the melted snow with a hiss and a sputter, and developed the stick in a ma.s.s of glowing red.
d.i.c.k fed his fire a full half hour, hunting continually in the snow under the trees for brushwood and finding much of it, enough to start a second fire at the far end of the sheltered place, with more left in reserve. He spent another half hour heaping up the snow as a bulwark about his den, and then sat down between the two fires to dry and warm, almost to roast himself.
It was the first time that d.i.c.k understood how much pleasure could be drawn from a fire alone. What beautiful red and yellow flames! What magnificent glowing coals! What a glorious thing to be there, while the wind above was howling over the snowy and forlorn plain! His clothes dried rapidly. He no longer s.h.i.+vered. The grateful warmth penetrated every fiber of him and it seemed strange now that he should have been in despair only an hour ago. Life was a wonderful and brilliant thing. There was no ache in his bones, and the first tingling of his hands, ears, and nose he had relieved with the application of wet snow. Now he felt only comfort.
After a while d.i.c.k ate again of his jerked buffalo meat, and with the food, warmth, and rest, he began to feel sleepy. He plunged into the snow, hunted out more wood to add to his reserve, and then, with the two blankets, the Indian's and his own, wrapped about him, sat down where the heat of the two fires could reach him from either side, and with a heap of the wood as a rest for his back.