What followed haunted her dreams for many nights thereafter--a repulsive and sickening ordeal. She had seen Huntington do it, but then she had been able to turn her face away; and her hands--But necessity, responsibility, and pride, and perhaps some primitive instinct also, nerved her to the task. And she staggered back to camp, and stood before Philip, white and trembling, but triumphant. "Take a drink of whisky!" ordered Haig sharply. She obeyed him, gulping down the last of the precious contents of her flask. "It's down there--covered with leaves!" she gasped out at length. "Will anything--disturb it before I can--take Tuesday and the rope?" "Do you mean you've cleaned the whole deer?" he asked curiously. She nodded, still shuddering. "Well, you're a brick!" he said heartily. Then he added: "I thought perhaps a bobcat had stolen your--rabbit." She laughed with him, and then was off with Tuesday to bring her quarry home. She was not strong enough to lift and fasten the carcass on the horse's back; but the route was through clean grass along the cliff, and Tuesday made short work of that, with the deer dragged at the end of the rope. They had no salt, but there were a few rinds of bacon that Haig had told Marion to keep, and these were made to serve for seasoning. That venison, moreover, needed nothing to make it palatable; for they were ravenously hungry. Sprawled before the fire like savages, they feasted on a huge steak, broiled on two willow sticks, and well-browned on the outside at the start so that the tenderness was retained; and for an hour forgot. For so the stomach, at once the tyrant and the slave, has sometimes its hour of triumph, when heart and soul and brain are its willing captives, and the starkest fears and forebodings lose their sway, and death itself, though visible and near, has no power to ferment the grateful juices of the body. CHAPTER XXVI THE SNOW In the night they were awakened by a terrific outburst on the mountain top, surpassing all they had yet heard since their arrival in the valley. The forest roared under the onslaughts of the wind that swept down through the gorge as through a funnel. Protected though the camp was, in a measure, fierce gusts now and then assailed it, and later the rain came, almost in torrents, beating through the canopy of foliage, and half-flooding the bed. Marion, rising to renew the fire, felt that a sharp change had come in the atmosphere. It was colder than any night they had yet endured. Wrapped again in her blankets, she was unable to keep warm. Her feet, near the fire, were too hot, while her back and shoulders ached as if they had been packed in ice. Turn which way she would, on her back, on her side, or face downward, there was no relief from that acid cold. She did not complain, but cried softly, trying to hold back her sobs so that he should not hear her. "You're cold," he said, hearing her nevertheless. "A little--not very," she answered bravely.