Part 45 (2/2)

”Where is Bill?” the lumberman inquired.

”Av ye're quick, ye may catch um in th' office--av ye ain't Oi'm thinkin' ye niver will foind um. Be th' luk in his eye, he's gone afther th' b'y.”

The lumberman plunged again into the storm and made his way to the office. It was empty. As he turned heavily away the door opened and Ethel Manton flung herself into the room, gasping with exertion. Giving no heed to her uncle's presence, the girl's glance hurriedly swept the interior.

Her hand clutched at the bosom of her snow-powdered coat as she noted that the faded mackinaw was gone from its accustomed peg and the snowshoes from their corner behind the door.

Instantly the truth flashed through her brain--Charlie was lost in the seething blizzard and somewhere out in the timber Bill Carmody was searching for him.

With a smothered moan she flung herself onto the bunk and buried her face in the blankets.

The situation the foreman faced when he plunged into the whirling blizzard in search of the boy, while calling for the utmost in man's woodsmans.h.i.+p and endurance, was not so entirely hopeless as would appear. He remembered the intense interest evinced by the boy a few days before, when he had listened to the description of the rocky ledge which was the home of the _loup-cerviers_, and the eagerness with which he begged to visit the place.

What was more natural, he argued, than that the youngster, finding himself in unexpected possession of a rifle and ammunition, had decided to explore the spot and do a little hunting on his own account?

The full fury of the storm had not broken until noon, and he figured that the boy would have had ample time to reach the bluff where he could find temporary shelter among the numerous caves of its rocky formation.

Upon leaving the office, the boss headed straight for the rollway, and the mere holding his direction taxed his brain to the exclusion of all other thoughts.

The air was literally filled with flying snow fine as dust, which formed an opaque screen through which his gaze penetrated scarcely an arm's reach.

Time and again he strayed from the skidway and brought up sharply against a tree, but each time he altered his course and floundered ahead until he found himself suddenly upon the steep slope where the bank inclined to the river.

When Bill Carmody turned down-stream the gravity of his undertaking forced itself upon him. The fury of the storm was like nothing he had ever experienced.

The wind-whipped particles cut and seared his face like a shower of red-hot needles, and the air about him was filled with a dull roar, mighty in volume but strangely m.u.f.fled by the very denseness of the snow.

It took all his strength to push himself forward against the terrific force of the wind which seemed to sweep from every quarter at once into a whirling vortex of which he himself was the center.

One moment the air was sucked from his lungs by a mighty vacuum, and the next the terrible compression upon his chest caused him to gasp for breath.

The fine snow that he inhaled with each breath stung his lungs and he tied his heavy woolen m.u.f.fler across his mouth. He stumbled frequently and floundered about to regain his balance. He lost all sense of direction and fought blindly on, each bend of the river bringing him blunderingly against one or the other of its brush-grown banks.

The only thought of his benumbed brain was to make the rock ledge somewhere ahead. It grew dark, and the blackness, laden with the blinding, stinging particles, added horror to his bewilderment.

Suddenly his snowshoe struck against a hard object, and he pitched heavily forward upon his face and lay still. He realized then that he was tired.

Never in his life had he been so utterly body-weary, and the snow was soft--soft and warm--and the pelting ceased.

He thrust his arm forward into a more comfortable position and encountered a rock, and sluggishly through his benumbed faculties pa.s.sed a train of a.s.sociated ideas--rock, rock ledge, _loup-cerviers_, the boy! With a mighty effort he roused himself from the growing lethargy and staggered blindly to his feet.

He filled his lungs, tore the ice-incrusted m.u.f.fler from his lips and, summoning all his strength, gave voice to the long call of the woods:

”Who-o-o-p-e-e-e!”

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