His heart sank within
him. This, then, was to be the end of him. A vision of his own body,
stark and stiff, lying under a mound of drifting snow, swiftly passed
before his mind. He threw it off wrathfully. "Not yet! Not just yet!" he
shouted in defiance into the face of the howling storm.
Through the tumult and confusion of his thoughts one idea dominated--he
must make the hill-top. Sliding his hands down the trunk of the little
poplar he once more found his rifle and, laying it in the hollow of his
arm, he hugged it close to his side, shoved his freezing hands into his
pockets and, leaning hard against the driving blizzard, set off towards
the hill-top. A few paces he made, then turning around leaned back upon
the solid massive force of the wind till he could get breath. Again a
few steps upward and again a rest against the wind. His courage began to
come back.
"Aha!" he shouted at the storm. "Not yet! Not yet!" Gradually, and with
growing courage, he fought his way to the top. At length he stood upon
the storm-swept summit. "I say," he cried, heartening himself with his
speech, "this is so much to the good anyway. Now for the coulee." But
exactly where did it lie? Absolutely nothing could he see before him
but this blinding, choking mass of whirling snow. He tried to recall the
direction in relation to the hill as he had taken it from the top of the
tree.
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