A rare outdoor adventure with a young woman as the plucky heroine."Put in an extra pair of heavy socks, please, Fanny; it will be bitter cold to-night. Jack, get me the brown blanket for Jim. He 'll need it when I stop at Harriges."
Mr. Billings spoke quietly, but his heart was in a tumult. It was not easy for him to leave his sixteen-year-old daughter and eighteen-year-old son alone in a trapper's house in middle Canada, at the height of an unusual "snap" of cold. But his partner, in camp forty miles away, had been hurt by a falling tree, and had sent word by a neighbor asking for him; and Mr. Billings had to go.
"And, Jack," he called, as his son came with the horse-blanket, "take care of Fanny; you 're the man here now. And keep off the river. I saw wolf tracks this morning."
"Why, Father!" cried Jack, "are you sure? It must have been a dog. We have never heard of a wolf this far south since we 've been here."
"They were wolf tracks. Son," was the answer. "I know a wolf track when I see it. It 's the unusual cold and the deep snow that have driven them down out of the woods. You stay away from the river until I get back. I 'll be home in two or three days."
This was all there was to his leave-taking. They were not emotional people, these Billingses. That Father had to go forty miles, with the thermometer twenty-five below zero; that they two had to keep house alone, in a place where loneliness stalks barefaced always, were things to think of, to regret, to sorrow over, if need be, not to make a fuss about. Frances and John Billings were both children of the wilderness, and something of the stoicism of the men and the women and even of the beasts and the trees that live alone, far from their kind, and weather the rigors of seven months' winter, was theirs, even at the age when youth and high spirits fight bravely against cold and silence and hard work.
The house was lonely. It was bad enough to have Father gone, but to have him away and not to know whether "Partner Uncle Phil" would ever come again or not, to have only empty rooms and empty chairs to face, was more than uncomfortable.
The two young people looked at each other gravely across the supper-table.
"Don't let 's mope, Jack," said Fanny. "Let's clear up the attic. It needs it, and work is more fun than sitting still."
"Too cold, Sis," answered Jack. "You 'd think you were outdoors. And listen to that wind! I 'll wager Father 's glad he has that sleeping-bag over his legs!"
"Never mind Father!" said practical Fanny. "We can't do him any good thinking about him, and Father always has taken care of himself. If we work fast, the attic won't hurt us. I 'm going up!"
The girl arose, took a lamp, and went lightly upstairs. In a moment Jack, unwilling to sit and hold his hands and think, joined his sister. Together they dressed as if for outdoors, and then went up to the big, dim, cobwebby attic. It was cold.
"Whew !"said Jack. "Let's begin. Let 's start on that pile of junk over there!" and he stepped toward it as he spoke.
Whether he stumbled and fell or hit her arm by accident, he could never tell, but the next instant he was working madly to extinguish the flames which the oil from a broken lamp was spreading, while Fanny beat at his face and body with a blanket she had swept from a rafter. Luckily, they put the flames out, but when it was all over, save the smoke, Jack was curled up on the floor, moaning, his face black, and his cry all:
"Oh, my eyes—my eyes! Oh, my eyes!"
Very gently Fanny led him down the stairs, into the warmth and light of the sitting-room. As the warm air struck him, he gasped with pain.
"My collar, Fanny; get it off—oh!"
Quickly the girl unbuttoned his collar and opened his shirt at the neck. He was badly burned. Deftly she bathed the tortured face and neck, bound up the burns, and oiled the bandages. Then there was nothing to do but sit and watch.
Jack was a man in heart if a boy in years. Beyond his first involuntary cry, he set his teeth and said nothing. But Fanny knew. Once when she left the room noisily and crept back, she heard him moan, "My eyes! Father, my eyes!"
It was too much for Fanny. She said to herself:
"If I were hurt, Jack would never sit still and watch. He 'd do something. He needs a doctor. It 's only twenty miles to town by river. I can make it under the hour with the sail."
Even as she began to get together skates, cloak and gloves, sweater, and the fur "danco," she stopped.
"Wolves! Father said he saw a wolf track. And Father told Jack to stay off the river. If Father were only here! If I only had another horse! But I 'm not afraid. At least, I 'm not much afraid. And he did n't tell me to stay off."
Quietly she made her preparations. There were Jack's skates, longer and sharper than hers, but she knew she could use them. There was the fur danco, which fits head and neck and shoulders; there the thin mittens and the thick fur ones to cover them, the sweater, the belt, and the fur cloak. The skate-sail she meant to use was in the barn. She had already seen that the wind was quartering the river.
Fanny stepped into the sitting-room.
"Jack," she said, "Jack, I 'm going to skate to town and get Dr. Perry. He 'll be here in a few hours, and I ll come back with him. I can't see you suffer like this, and he may be able to do you a lot of good. No, don't say anything—I 'm going."
Whether Jack heard, or, hearing, understood, she did n't know. He put out a hand to her, and she grasped it and kissed it—an unusual demonstration for her to make—then ran from the room. The tears, which blinded her at that feeble motion of her usually strong, well brother to keep her by him, froze to her lashes as she stepped out. It was bitter cold, and even through her fur the north wind's icy knife cut true and sharp.
"This is n't the time for tears; it's the time for me to be a man," she said, half sobbing, to herself, nor smiled at the words.
She ran to the barn, and took from the wall her brother's skate-sail. Shaped like a big kite it was, nine feet long, five broad, with two crossed spars to hold it taut. She remembered how she and her father had laughed at Jack when he made it, after some plan he had seen in one of their rare magazines, and how he had had the laugh on them and the envy of all the countryside youth when he carried it and outstripped the fleetest skater of them all. Then she caught her breath with the thought, "Will he ever skate again?" shook the dread from her, and tried to think only of Jack as well and strong. It was with profound gratitude and eyes that would fill that she worked over the heavy sail and remembered that she had a generous brother who had shared his sport with her and taught her how to use the thing, so graceful when well managed, so cumbersome to the novice.
"I 'll make you a lighter one; this is too heavy for you," Jack had said.
But she was glad she had learned to use the heavy one.
Slipping on her skating-gear quickly, Fanny drew the straps tight—tight.
"Feet 'll shrink with the cold; must n't get loose," she thought.
Then, confident, and with fears behind her, she stepped off the little wharf on to the black surface of the Skatchawattomie. She was not cold now; the excitement of her adventure had gripped her. A few strokes brought her to the middle of the little river. The skate-sail she held horizontal over her head, well knowing that to bring it broadside to the wind before she was ready was to be thrown or have it torn away from her. Then carefully she set her feet, the right one in front, drew in her breath, and, with a sudden motion, brought the skate-sail upright along her right side. Before the wind could whip it about, her left hand had caught the horizontal spar which rested on her shoulder, her right grasped the upright, and, almost as if shot from a gun, she spun away down the cracking, booming ribbon of ice which stretched so far, so black, in front of her.
It is an exhilarating sport, this skate-sailing, almost like flying. So swift the motion, so birdlike and so effortless, the body seems without weight. Keen air whips the blood to the face with such a tingle, and the excitement of the possibility of a spill and of the motion and the necessity for alertness of guiding is so great, that, purely as a sport, it has few equals. But, joyous as Fanny had always found skate-sailing, it was not sport to-night; it was business. She had little time for enjoyment; every nerve was strained to get to town and get the doctor back to that poor burned body in the house, already far behind. Yet it was impossible to keep some feeling of exultation from her heart, even though she chided herself for it.
Even as she exulted in the swift motion and shook with a little shiver of pleasure at her speed, her face blanched. Seeming an answer to the loud ring of skates on brittle ice there came through the air from behind a soft, high, keen note. She had never heard it, but she knew what it was.
"Wolves," she whispered; "wolves!" And then again, "Wolves!" She could not be mistaken.
Well she knew, from many a camp-fire story told by hunter and trapper as well as from thrilling tales her father had told, what a pack of winter-starved wolves may mean to the unwary traveler. One wolf can be scared away, two or three need but little vigilance, but a pack is death to one man, be he armed how he may.
For a moment panic gripped her. But always she saw in her imagination the picture of a suffering, dearly loved face, a freckled hand groping for her. The young face steeled itself.
"It 's for Jack. He 'd do it for me," she thought, and swung a little closer to the wind.
The black ribbon of ice swung steady and low beneath her feet, and there was but little noise, only the hiss of the skates as they cut into the cold-cracked surface, and an occasional "clang" as she struck with one foot or another a frozen bit of wood, an air-hole, or a crack. She was thankful for her brother's long skates, that saved many a tumble, and for her strong ankles. With every bend in the river she must change the position of her feet, and sometimes swing the heavy sail over her head and down the other side. Cold she was not. Going with the wind, she felt none; across it, and the sail protected her. Only her feet were getting numb, from vibration rather than from cold.
Then again she heard it, nearer now and louder, a keen, high cry that was half a howl and half a growl and wholly terrifying. She looked back. There was nothing in sight. But—
"Horror!" she thought. "Horror! They are coming—coming—and soon I 'll see them behind me. Give me strength!"
The banks of the river were as black as the surface. Starshine only lighted the path, and she prayed as she flew that no bad air-hole might throw her. Even as she thought it, one foot went through and caught, and it was with a wrench and a jar that she got her feet together again. Then, as if the high gods were indeed testing her courage, while her heart still beat with terror of the thought of an injury to her leg or foot, right behind her, it seemed, came the noise of the pack, in full cry now, and scenting well the flying quarry just ahead. But Fanny, her blood up high and her brother's helpless cry still in her ears, forgot to be frightened as she turned and looked back.
"Small pack," she thought, as they swung into sight, eager and lank and swift, pin-points of light for merciless eyes, "but big enough for me."
Then she turned her face to the work in front. She had to change sail several times to make a difficult turn, and she felt she was losing ground. But a flaw in the wind took her just then, and instead of easing off, as she had been doing, to relieve the terrific strain on ankle and leg, she bore up against the wind, leaning hard against the sail. It was like pulling a throttle wide open! For the few minutes the flaw held, she spun along at a rate that would shame an ice-boat. Then the flaw fell, and her speed dropped. Behind her, closer and closer, she heard the occasional cry of the pack.
"But it is n't far now," she thought. "It can't be far now. It 's just around that bend," hopefully.
Fanny did not know the river as Jack did, and the night and the excitement and the wolves had confused her as to just where she was.
Now she swung into a long and narrow stretch with the wind dead across it, and she had to tack or lose speed. And as she tacked, looking round her sail, she could see the black mass of terror sweeping straight down the lane.
"It 's now or never," she thought, as she reached the bend of the river.
But it was to be "now."
"Yes, there it is! There it is!"
Fanny's thought was a cry aloud. The lights of the little town were in sight. And with the wolfpack trailing twenty yards behind her, she flung herself at the low wharf, pitched the sail to the pack, and, while they worried it, flew, skates and all, into the little store, gasped out her story to an astounded crowd of men, and then faded quietly into a land where there were neither wolves nor ice nor burned brother Jack.
In the long days of convalescence, when no one knew whether he would ever see again or not, Frances had to talk and to read much to keep both from thinking too often of those hours of horror: for Jack, when, blinded and pain-racked, he waited helplessly for the aid which seemed so long in coming; for her, when, coupled with the thought of being torn to pieces, was the other terror that, should she fail, her brother might suffer for days before relief, or—the end.
But the terror of these memories grew less with each passing hour, and vanished on the day when Dr. Perry took the bandage from Jack's eyes and he saw again.
"It was that, and a girl's pluck, that saved your eyes, young man," he said, pointing to the torn sail standing in the corner of the room.
But Jack only raised his eyes and took his sister's smiling face between his thin, scarred hands.
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