The trees pitched wildly in the icy blast; the moan increased to a mighty roar, and the air was thick with flying snow. Not the soft, flaky snow of the previous storm, but particles fine as frozen fog, that bit and stung as they whirled against his face in the eddying gusts that came from no direction at all and every direction at once.
The boy bowed his head to the storm and pushed steadily forward--he _must_ kill the _loup-cervier_, whose trail was growing momentarily more indistinct.
His eyes could penetrate but a few yards into the white smother, and suddenly the dark wall of the rock ledge loomed in front of him, and the trail, almost obliterated now, turned sharply and disappeared between two huge, upstanding bowlders.
CHAPTER XLI
THE BLIZZARD
At eleven o"clock in the morning Bill Carmody ordered his teams to the stables.
At twelve o"clock, when the men crowded into the grub-shack, the air was filled with fine particles of flinty snow, and the roar of the wind through the pine-tops was the mighty roar of the surf of a pounding sea.
At one o"clock the boss called "gillon," and with loud shouts and rough horse-play, the men made a rush for the bunk-house.
At two o"clock Daddy Dunnigan thrust his head through the doorway of the shop where Bill, under the blacksmith"s approving eye, was completing a lesson in the proper welding of the broken link of a log chain.
With a mysterious quirk of the head he motioned the foreman to follow, and led the way to the cook-shack, where Blood River Jack waited with lowering brow.
"D"yez happin to know is th" b"y up yonder?" asked the old Irishman, with a jerk of his thumb in the direction of the house. Bill beat the dry snow from his clothing as he stared from one to the other.
"The boy!" he cried. "What do you mean? Come--out with it--_quick_!"
"It is that my rifle and belt have gone from under the bunk," Blood River Jack answered. "They were taken while I slept. The boy did not come to dinner in the grub-shack. Is it that he eats to-day with his people?"
"Good Lord! I don"t know! Haven"t you seen him, Daddy?"
"Not since mebbe it"s noine o"clock in th" marnin", an" he wint to th"
bunk-house. I thoucht he wuz wid Jack." Bill thought rapidly and turned to the old man.
"Here, you, Daddy--get a move on now!" he ordered. "That ginger cake of yours that the kid likes, hustle some of it into a pail or a basket or something, and carry it up to the house. Tell them it"s for Charlie, and you"ll find out if he"s there. If not, get out by saying that he"s probably in the bunk-house, and get back here as quick as you can make it. There is no use in alarming the people up there--yet."
"Here you, Jack, go help the old man along. It"s a tough job bucking that storm even for a short distance. Come now, beat it!"
After ten minutes the two returned, breathless from their short battle with the storm.
"He ain"t there," gasped the old man and sank down upon the wood-box with his head in his hands. "G.o.d help um, he"s out in ut!"
"I"m going to the office," said the foreman and stepped out into the whirling snow.
"Man! Man!" called Daddy, springing to his feet; "ye ain"t a goin" to thry----" The door banged upon his words and he sagged slowly onto his rough seat.
A few minutes later Appleton stamped into the cook-shack. "Did you find him, Daddy?" he asked.
The old man shook his head. "He ain"t in th" camp," he muttered. "He tuk Jack"s gun whilst he slep" an" ut"s huntin" he"s gone--Lard hilp um!"
"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 woodsmanship 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!"