"Hold up! Be brave!" urged her chum. "We must not give up now. Some other tree will give us shelter. Cling together, girls. We _must_ get somewhere."
But where? It was a question none of them could answer. They remained cowering in the driving snow, utterly confused as to direction, and fast becoming buried where they stood.
CHAPTER XXI
ADRIFT IN THE STORM
"We shall freeze to death if we stay here!"
Madge Steele spoke thus, and the situation precluded any doubt as to the truth of the statement. The six girls from Snow Camp were indeed in peril of death--and all were convinced of the fact.
Lluella Fairfax was in tears, and her chum, Belle Tingley, was on the verge of weeping, too. Helen Cameron had hard work to keep back her own sobs; even Jennie Stone, the stout girl, was past turning the matter into a joke. And Madge Steele was unable to suggest a single cheerful portent.
As they clung to each other in the driving snow they seemed, intuitively, to turn to Ruth Fielding. She was the youngest of the six girls; but she was at this moment the more a.s.sertive and held herself better under control than her mates.
It had been against her advice that they had left their temporary shelter under the tree. Now they could not beat their way back to it.
Indeed, none of them now knew the direction of the burrow that had sheltered them for more than an hour.
What next should they do?
Although unspoken, this was the question that the five silently asked of the girl of the Red Mill. She had displayed her pluck and good sense on more than one occasion, and her friends looked to her for help. Particularly did Helen cling to her in this emergency, and although Ruth was secretly as terrified as any of her mates, she could not give in to the feeling when her chum so depended upon her.
"Why, we"re acting just as silly as we can act!" she cried, speaking loud so that they could all hear her. "We mustn"t give up hope. The boys, or Mr. Cameron, will find us. It can"t keep on snowing forever."
"But we"re freezing to death!" said Belle, and broke out sobbing like her chum.
"Stop, you silly thing!" cried Madge, trying to shake her. But she was really so cold herself that she could not do this. Indeed, the keen wind would soon make movement impossible if they stood still for long.
"Let"s keep moving!" shouted Ruth. "Take hold of hands, girls--two by two. Helen and I will go ahead. Now, Belle, you take Lluella.
Madge and Heavy in the rear. Forward--march!"
"This is a regular Amazon March; isn"t it?" croaked Heavy, from behind.
"But where shall we march to?" Belle queried.
"We"ll keep going until we find some shelter. That"s the best we can do. Indeed, it is all we _can_ do," replied Ruth.
It was impossible to do more than drift before the gale. Ruth knew this, and likewise she was confident that they were by no means getting nearer to the camp when they followed such a course. But she hoped to find some shelter before the weakest of the girls gave out.
This was Lluella Fairfax. She was delicately built, and unused to muscular exertion of any kind. She seldom took up any gym work at Briarwood, Ruth knew; therefore it was not strange that she should be the first to give out.
For, although the s.e.xtette of girls went but a short distance, and traveled very slowly, it was indeed a fearful task for them. The storm drove them on, and suddenly, when Jennie Stone gave utterance to a wild whoop and disappeared from view, Lluella and Belle burst out crying again, and even Madge showed signs of weakening.
"Help! help!" she cried. "She"s fallen down a precipice!"
"She"s smothered in a snow-bank!" gasped Helen.
Heavy uttered another cry, but seemingly from a great way off. Ruth scrambled back to Madge, and suddenly found her own feet slipping over the brink of some steep descent. She cried out and clung to Madge. Helen took hold of Madge"s other hand, and they drew Ruth back to safety.
"Look out!" commanded the older girl. "You"ll be down in that hole, too, Ruth."
"No, no! We must make some attempt to get her up. Jennie! Jennie!
where are you?" shrieked Ruth.
"Right under you. Girls! you want to be careful. I"ve slid down a bank and am standing on what appears to be a narrow shelf along the face of this bank, or hill. And the snow isn"t drifted here. Come down."
"Oh, I wouldn"t dare!" cried Lluella.
"If the place will afford us any shelter from this awful wind, why not?" demanded Helen. "We might try it."
"How deep are you down, Jennie?" asked Madge.
"Only a few feet. You couldn"t ever haul me up, anyway," and the stout girl laughed, hysterically. "You know how heavy I am."
"Let me try it," said Ruth, eagerly. "Here"s where Jennie slid over.
Look out, below!"
"Oh, come on! you can"t hurt me," declared the stout one, and in a moment Ruth had slipped over the edge of the bank and had landed beside Heavy.
"It"s all right, girls!" shouted Ruth at once. She could see that the shelf widened a little way beyond, and was overhung by a huge boulder in the bank, making a really admirable shelter--not exactly a cave, but a large-sized cavity.
After some urging, Lluella and Belle allowed themselves to be lowered by Madge and Helen over the brink of the bank. Then Helen herself slid down, and then the oldest girl. When Miss Steele landed upon the shelf beside them, she cried:
"This is just a mercy! Another five minutes up there in the wind and snow, and I don"t believe I could have walked at all. My, my! ain"t I cold!"
The six girls cowered together under the overhanging rock. The snow blew in a thick cloud over their heads and they heard it sifting down through the trees below them. They were upon a steep side-hill--the wall of a steep gully, perhaps. How deep it was they had no means of knowing; but several good-sized trees sprouted out of the hill near their refuge. They could see the dim forms of these now and then as the snow-cloud changed.
But although they were out of the beat of the storm, they grew no warmer. More than Madge Steele complained of the cold within the next few minutes. Ruth, indeed, felt her extremities growing numb. The terrible, biting frost was gradually overcoming them, now that they were no longer fighting the blast. Exertion had fought this deadly coldness off; but Ruth Fielding knew that their present inaction was beckoning the approach of unconsciousness.
CHAPTER XXII
THE HIDEOUT
Helen had drawn close to her chum and they sat upon the pile of leaves that had blown into this lair under the bank, with their arms about each other"s waists.
"What do you suppose will become of us, Ruthie?" Helen whispered.
"Why, how can we tell? Maybe the boys and Long Jerry are searching for us right now----"
"In this dreadful storm? Impossible!" declared Helen.