CHAPTER XIV A MYSTERIOUS VISIT IN THE NIGHT
Next morning they opened their eyes to a new world. The fog was gone, the sun shone bright. Up from the south had come a gentle wind that brought with it the breath of spring.
Far away before them, like the jagged teeth of a worn out saw, was a range of mountains. The tops of these mountains still appeared to smoke with the snow swept over the summits.
“I wonder what it’s like up there,” the girl said to Johnny.
“In time you are sure to know,” he said. “Our trail leads over that range. May God grant us a low pass.”
“You may well say that.” Gordon Duncan’s eyes seemed to see things far distant and remote. “But as you say, the trail leads over those mountains. There is no other way.”
The week that followed will linger long in the memory of Johnny Longbow and his smiling companion of the trail, for it was spring, and who could forget such an occasion?
In the Arctic winter lingers long. Spring is thrice welcome. This year, creeping up behind a veil of fog, it appeared to burst upon them like a revelation.
The snow grew soft beneath their feet. Little rivers began coursing away to the north. The surfaces of lakes, long locked with ice, glistened with water that buried the solid depths of ice that still lingered.
Little snow-buntings, silent for long, began their cheerful chee-chee, and far above in the bluest of skies an early covey of wild ducks winged their silent way.
The first touch of spring brought out small game in abundance. Snowshoe rabbits, leaving their hiding places, hopped about in a leisurely fashion. Ptarmigan were so numerous that the wandering bowmen grew expert in the art of beheading them with a well shot broadhead arrow. And what could be sweeter than a ptarmigan roasted over a glowing bed of coals?
Once, creeping through tall dead grass of a year’s standing, they came upon a flock of gray ducks that had come all the way from the southland.
As he smiled over the breast of a fine duck that evening Johnny’s face suddenly sobered. He had bitten upon something that had nearly cost him a tooth.
“A shot,” he said as he produced a mashed bit of lead. “Someone shot at him way down there where there is no ice and snow, and he brought this, a message from another land.”