One hundred miles of sun and fair weather, and then fifty miles of
bitter, aching cold, with nights of peril from the increasing chill, so
that Jim dared not sleep lest he should never wake again, but die
benumbed and exhausted. Yet Arrowhead slept through all. Day after day
so, and then ten miles of storm such as come only to the vast barrens of
the northlands; and woe to the traveller upon whom the icy wind and the
blinding snow descended! Woe came upon Jim Templeton and Arrowhead, the
heathen.
In the awful struggle between man and nature that followed, the captive
became the leader. The craft of the plains, the inherent instinct, the
feeling which was more than eyesight became the only hope. One whole day
to cover ten miles--an endless path of agony, in which Jim went down
again and again, but came up blinded by snow and drift, and cut as with
lashes by the angry wind. At the end of the ten miles was a Hudson's Bay
Company's post and safety; and through ten hours had the two struggled
towards it, going off at tangents, circling on their own tracks; but the
Indian, by an instinct as sure as the needle to the pole, getting the
direction to the post again, in the moments of direst peril and
uncertainty.
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