"I whistled the setter, and she called repeatedly, but he refused to
follow. When we started down the trail, he watched us from his post at the
farther end of the ice-bridge, whining and baying, and the moment she
stopped at the first turn to look back, he streaked off once more for that
pocket. 'Never mind,' I said, and helped her over a rough place, 'Jerry
knows he is a good traveler. He will be home before you.' But it was plain
to me he would not, and try as I might to hurry her out of range of his
cry, it belled again soon, and the cliffs caught it over and over and
passed it on to us far down the gorge."
There was one of those speaking silences in which the great heart of the
man found expression, and the woman beside him, following his gaze, sifted
the cloudy Pass. She seemed in that moment to see that other canyon,
stretching down from the glacier, and those two skirting the edge of
cliffs, treading broken stairs, pursued by the cry of the setter into the
gathering gloom of the Arctic night.
"It grew very cold in that gorge," he went on, "and I blamed myself for
taking her that trip more and more. She never complained, never stopped,
except to look back and listen for the dog, but shadows deepened under her
eyes; the patient lines seemed chiseled where they had been only lightly
drawn, and when she caught me watching her and coaxed up her poor little
smile, I could have picked her up in my arms and carried her the rest of
the way. But we reached the tree-line before she came to her limit. It was
at the turn in a cliff, and I stopped, looking down across the tops of a
belt of spruce, to locate the cabin. 'There it is,' I said. 'You see that
little brown patch down there in the blur of green. That is your house.
You are almost home.'
"She moved a step to see better and stumbled, and she only saved herself
by catching my arm in both hands. Then her whole body fell to shaking. I
felt unnerved a little, for that matter. It was a dangerous place. I had
been recklessly foolish to delay her there. But when I had found a safe
seat for her around the cliff, the shivering kept up, chill after chill,
and I mixed a draught for her, as I had at the glacier.
"'This will warm your blood,' I said, holding the cup for her. 'Come,
madam, we must fight the cold off for another hour; that should see you
home. After I have made a good fire, I am going to show you what a fine
little supper I can prepare. Bear steaks at this season are prime.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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